


Dragonsdawn: A Pastoral Fantasy

by silveradept



Series: The Suck Fairy's Greatest Hits: The Dragonriders of Pern [13]
Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: Ableism, Anti-Transhumanism, Blinkered Thinking, Colonialism, Commentary, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Hypocrisy, Meta, Murder, Nonfiction, Racism, Sex-Negativity, Sexism, Slut Shaming, Speciesism, Stereotypes, Swearing, Torture, gender essentialism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 15
Words: 36,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23607010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept
Summary: A commentary read with excerpts of Dragonsdawn, the first of the First Pass works, part of the Dragonriders of Pern novels.
Relationships: Sean Connell/Sorka Hanrahan, Tarvi Andiyar | Tarvi Telgar/Sallah Telgar
Series: The Suck Fairy's Greatest Hits: The Dragonriders of Pern [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1663699
Comments: 16
Kudos: 5





	1. An Origin Story

**Author's Note:**

> This is the Director's Cut of meta originally posted at [Slacktiverse](https://slacktiverse.wordpress.com).
> 
> Content notes for each chapter are in their respective posts, and all content notes in the work are in the tags.
> 
> Director's commentary will be rendered _[in a manner like this.]_

Welcome, welcome! Since Moreta and Nerilka, we've advanced two years to 1988. We've gone through two distinct time periods, the Ninth Pass and the Sixth Pass, where some things are different, but a lot is depressingly the same, varying only in matter of degree rather than with one time period having something and the other lacking it. Let's see if this book has much of the same, or is actually going to be different.

The beginning of the book contains maps, of the kind that would be used in Ninth Pass Pern, despite the story being set in the very origins of the planet. I suspect this is one of those signals meant to say "Yes, this is a Pern novel, don't worry," as the structure has shifted again, back to the original form given in Dragonflight, with three Parts instead of chapter designations. The electronic version I'm using has chapter breaks, but the actual text of the book doesn't explicitly say "Chapter $foo" when those breaks are reached. So with this story, the breaks may not be at official chapter points, but at whatever point in the narrative I think a post has gone on too long or when my bullshit capacity has been reached.

**Dragonsdawn, Part One: Content Notes: Gender and Race stereotypes, ableism**

Part One is titled "Landing", and the first line we receive is about probe reports arriving, from someone named Telgar reporting to someone named Benden.

That said, within the first paragraph, there are two named women (Sallah Telgar and Emily Boll) and one named man (Paul Benden), and the two women converse about something other than the man. That's good. Bechdel-Wallace Test passed. What's bad is that the man is the fleet admiral and the two women are subordinate officers.

This fleet, the Pern Colonial Expedition, is the culmination of nearly two hundred years of work from the original recommendation from the Exploration and Evaluation team. They've also been flying for about fifteen years from their departure point at this juncture of the narrative, which is where we finally receive in-text information that Pern is the third planet of the star Rukbat, whose entire system is surrounded by an Oort cloud of space rocks. This is all in the Sagittarian Sector, so we should probably guess that this planet is orbiting one of the many stars in the constellation Sagittarius, were one looking at it from Terra. The spoiler data of previous volumes is finally starting to stop being spoilers. There are three ships in the expedition - the Yokohama, the Bahrain, and the Buenos Aires. Two cities and a country, because naming consistency is unnecessary, apparently.

Before too much longer, Telgar, Benden, and Boll have a Keroon, as well, and I fully expect the name-dropping to continue fast and furious. While we wait for that, there's also an introduction to the mission itself.

> The trip was one-way--it had to be, considering the cost of getting over six thousand colonists and supplies to such an out-of-the-way sector of the galaxy. Once they reached Pern the fuel left in the great transport ships would be enough only to achieve and maintain a synchronous orbit above their destination while people and cargo were shuttled down to the surface. To be sure, they had homing capsules that would reach the headquarters of the Federated Sentient Planets in a mere five years, but to a retired naval tactician like Paul Benden, a fragile homing capsule did not offer much in the way of an effective backup. The Pern expedition was composed of committed and resourceful people who had chosen to eschew the high-tech societies of the Federated Sentient Planets. They expected to manage on their own. And though their destination in the Rukbat system was rich enough in ores and minerals to support an agriculturally based society, it was poor enough and far enough from the center of the galaxy that it should escape the greed of the technocrats.

This is almost a basket-of-Whatfruit level of NOPE going on here. A highly technically advanced interplanetary federation having enough people who want to play at the pre-tech life...that's actually believable. As is gathering enough people to basically go on a one-way trip to another planet to live what they think of as a more simple life. I'm having trouble, though, with the idea that these colonists are trained in the techniques that make an agricultural society thrive and succeed - having read about it and having actually done it are two very different things. Plus, the actual work of farming is labor-intensive. I'm not sure how many of that six thousand there would have to be farmers to feed everyone, because I have no idea whether their insistence on being out of the way means no energy-requiring machines at all or only some machines doing that work. And that's assuming that Federation crops and animals will take hold on Pern and flourish. Presumably, the evaluation that happened has figured this out. Or so we hope.

As it turns out, both Benden and Boll are trying to get away from a society that considers them war heroes ("charismatic" ones, no less). They are supposedly ideal leaders for this expedition:

> He hated the interminable debate over minor points that seemed to obsess those in charge of the landing operation. He preferred to make quick decisions and implement them immediately, instead of talking them to death.

So that's where his namesake Weyrleaders get their impulsiveness from.

Emily Boll's perspective is also used to describe Benden - after assuring us that he is not her type, the narrative has her describe his thick blonde hair, blunt nose, forceful jaw, and his mouth, and his general good health after having apparently pushed himself to the limit (seventy straight hours awake) in defense against an invasion. When Benden is used to return the favor later, she's described as a lean, bony woman with shoulder-length gray and naturally wavy hair, but what he likes most is her wiry physical and mental strength, personal vitally, and ruthlessness. "Just being in her presence gave one's spirits a lift." So the man is described primarily in terms of his physical features and abilities, the woman primarily in terms of her non-physical qualities. And then, to prove it's not necessarily just sexism at work, the head agronomer, Mar Dook, is described as "a small man whose Earth Asiatic ancestry was evident in features, skin tone, and physiology: he was wiry, lean, and slightly bowed in the shoulders, but his black eyes gleamed with eager intelligence and the excitement of the challenge."

The sight of Pern turns Boll's attention to the planet itself, which was apparently named after...something. Not too soon after that, after an oath to "the Holies" to not botch this planet, Emily thinks about the current set of problems:

> She thought of the friction she had sensed between the charterers, who had raised the staggering credits needed to finance the Pern expedition, and the contractors, the specialists hired to round out the basic skills required for the undertaking. Each could end up with a largeous amount of land or mineral rights on this new world, but the fact that the charterers would get first choice was a bone of contention.  
>  Differences! Why did there always have to be distinctions, arrogantly displayed as superiororities, or derided as inferiorities? Everyone would have the same opportunity, no matter how many stake acres they could claim as charterer or had been granted as contractor. On Pern, it would truly be up to the individual to succeed, to prove his claim and to manage as much land as he and his cared for. That would be the catholic distinction. Once we've landed, everyone will be too bloody busy to fret over "differences", she consoled herself, [...and watches the weather.]

The contractors have a point - if this is supposed to be an egalitarian planet, and everyone just left to till their land and survive as the first successful Randian experiment in millennia, if the charterers get first dibs, they get an advantage that, if properly exploited, will mean the contractors won't ever be able to be on even footing with them. The paradise of John Galt will be dead before it starts. And, if Terran history is any indicator, those with big plots of land will be able to eventually turf out the smaller ones and put them in a vassalage relationship, if not outright slavery. We're already seeing the seeds of what will eventually be the Pernese aristocracy and caste system. Because the people that put up the money are expecting the best things as the financiers. The rich and the working classes, already at odds with each other. So who gets to own the means of production in Pern?

The actual story continues with the probe data of the planet and how that matches with the plans to colonize the planet and the previous survey - lots of arable farmland in the south, good for Terran crops reported to be compatible, some edible native plants, some edible native marine life (but plans for boats and introducing fish _and dolphins, with whom the colonists can converse_ into the ecosystem that they don't think will impact the native Pernese species. That's not possible.), and what looks to be tougher sledding for the animals like the cows and horses, because native grass is incompatible with them. Were it not for the grudgingly approved Eridani-sourced genetic manipulation techniques used to make sure the animals would adapt to their new home, the settlers might very well have had to try and tame a native creature.

The data seems to give a green light for landing, as well as the origin of the name of the wherries. "Because they resemble airborne barges-squat, fat, and full." As the data comes through, the effects of what we now know as Thread rain are discussed, along with glows, and there's much complaining that there's a lot more growth in those spots that were barren than the survey pointed out. Some of the scientists want to pursue the phenomenon of the pockmarks and the growth, while others are very concerned about the adaptability of crops.

In all of this activity, at the center of everything, is Kitti Ping, "the most eminent geneticist in the Federated Sentient Planets--the only human that had been trained by the Eridanis." Who may be coming to practice selective memory, like many of the others, referring to incidents only tangentially mentioned. Ping's presence makes lots of people confident of the colony's success, because they can get her to change the genes of the plants and animals to match the planet if needed.

In rumination about the landing, Benden chooses a plateau in the shadow of volcanoes, worries about a safe debarkation, and, in reviewing the methods the main pilot has been using to train the colony ship pilots, lets slip that the Federated Sentient Planets are -ists against cyborgs, where "cyborgs" means "people with pseudoflesh prosthetics", and that all the cyborgs in the military were shunted into administration and desk jobs and only "whole" people are allowed to go out in the Exploration and Evaluation Corps. Thus, both Benden (fingers) and the main pilot, Fusaiyuki (leg) know what their career pathways were going to be if they didn't come on the colony ships.

The formal meeting to choose a landing site happens between Benden, Jim Tillek, and Ezra Keroon. (One of Benden's subordinates, Joel Lilienkamp, has an eidetic memory, for both bets and cargoes, incidentally.) Tillek wants to be close to water, Keroon's nervous about the volcanoes, which Benden dismissed as "no seismic activity for a couple hundred years", since it didn't have any activity during the original survey, and the three agree on Benden's preferred site in short order, and set the landing process in motion.

The scene switches to Officer Telgar getting some off-duty chow, letting us know how much she just wants a home, having been bounced from post to post before being orphaned in the war. The only available seats are next to Avril Bitra, Bart Lemos, and Nabhi Nabol, who are the people Telgar likes least on the ship. (The name dropping continues until all the Holds are named, right?)

In proper-to-be Pernese tradition, Telgar engages in the trademark "other women are boohissslutty" mental gossip that Kylara will be subjected to much later on. (Previously, Benden had spent a sentence wishing he hasn't been involved with Bitra so much, but she was a hottie. So, whatevs, admiral? Good to know that it's only women who are going to be catty to reach other.)

> Gossip had it that Avril had spent a good deal of the last five years in Admiral Paul Benden's bed. Candidly, Sallah could see why a virile man like the admiral would be sexually attracted by the astrogator's dark and flashing beauty. A mixture of ethnic ancestors had given her the best of all possible features. She was tall, neither willowy nor overripe, with luxuriant black hair that she often wore loose in silky ripples. Her slightly sallow complexion was flawless and her movements gracefully studied, but her eyes, snapping with black fire, indicated a highly intelligent and volatile personality. Avril was not a woman to cross, and Sallah had carefully maintained her distance from Paul Benden, or anyone else seen more than three times in April's company. If the unkind pointed out Paul Benden's recent marked absence from Avril's side, the charitable said that he was needed for long conferences with his staff, and the time for dalliance was over. Those who had been victims of Avril's sharp tongue said that she had lost her bid to be the admiral's lady.

Oh, for the Whatfruit's sake...

_[And there's the Cocowhat.]_

Let's see what offensive tropes we have on display here. Hypersexual woman of "ethnic" heritage? Check. Otherwise flawless woman turning out to be a shrew AND a gold digger as her "humanizing" traits? Check. Other woman used as the viewpoint to discuss her flaws in the meanest way possible? Check. The guy in the relationship portrayed as basically having followed his penis without further thought until later? Check.

And this is from a supposedly far future society. That inexplicably has the same morals and descriptors of the time period of the writer, including what looks to be a hefty dose of racial stereotyping. This is a giant worldbuilding failure, even if it is a common complaint against speculative fiction.

The plot continues with the revelation of the landing spot and the resolution of various wagers on that decision. Sallah continues to be offended by Avril's behavior and wonders why such an apparently city girl would come out on an expedition to the sticks, in between musings about the lack of coffee on the new world (it just doesn't take) and her own reasons for coming on the expedition. Exiting the lounge, Sallah has a crash-into-hello with a family recently awakened from their deep sleep and stops to help a geologist (Tarvi Andiyar) get their bearings. Tarvi has

> one of the most beautiful faces she had ever seen on a man - not Benden's rugged, warrior features, but a beautiful and sophisticated and subtle arrangement, almost sculpted, like some of the ancient Indic and Cambodian princes on ruined stone murals. She flushed as she remembered what those princes had been doing in the murals.

More race-related imagery, but this time, it's apparently the men who are doing sexual things instead of the women. Sallah has a lot of sex on the brain, apparently. After one more encounter with someone whose glibness of speech aggravates her, she decides that it's the presence of all the people that's aggravating her, and she decides to get away from everything by slipping down to the admiral's personal craft.

That's where the ebook has a chapter break, and I suppose it's as good a place as any to stop. If this entire book is going to be like this, it was probably a bad idea for the origin story of Pern to be written. At the very least, this is probably not the spot to start, because it gives very little action and very much pettiness all around.

_[This entire book is basically setting up the idea that not only are the places named for the leaders, for the most part, but the leaders of those places generally have the same morals, ideals, and methods as the people those places were named for. I suspect this rule had long since-been established firmly in the mind of the author by the time this book came into being, but what it does is condemn Avril Bitra, one of the first, if not the first, named woman of color, to being a terrible, amoral person concerned with profit, and Nabhi Nabol and Bart Lemos being terrible people who also go along with Bitra. Benden, Boll, and the others are the virtuous ones and the ones who will eventually establish and maintain the civilization that's supposed to be started on the planet. (And yet, somehow, the names of these villains will persist as the names of their places all the way through each Pass, instead of being erased as bad examples.) Knowing what I know now, I'll have to pay better attention to the Telgar clan, to see whether the things that make Telgar Weyr the most-villainous Weyr until a proper protagonist takes over are here at this point.]_


	2. Eccentric Orbits

Last time, the colony ships arrived at their new home, with lots of pettiness, racial stereotyping, and bets coming to pass. And it sounded like the Federated Sentient Planets still had a few issues of their own to work out.

**Dragonsdawn: Part One: Content Notes: None noticed**

The action returns with Sallah, nearly bored out of her skull on her current watch, inquiring of one of her fellows' work. It's on the entity that will be called the Red Star, whose orbit pattern is irregular and presence hasn't been adequately explained by anything other than a highly improbable sequence of events where everything just happened to be in the right place at the right time. The actual data on where the planet is has it just past the farthest point out of its solar orbit, if I remember the right meaning of "aphelion", and Captain Keroon comments that there should be a very nice meteorite show of the Oort cloud material the wanderer is pulling with it in about eight years. Knowing what we know about Threadfall, that suggests the colonists will be in for a rude awakening in about eight years time.

Except for something that's clawing at my brain, insisting that astronomical orbits do not work this way, with the data we have about Pern. Namely, Threadfall lasts about fifty revolutions, then there's a break of about two hundred revolutions. If the wandering planet takes that long to go around and come back, it doesn't seem like it should be getting into spore range so quickly after it reaches an apex point, unless that apex point is really close to Pern. If that's the case, though, it seems like Thread should fall while the wanderer is both coming and going, but also that it seems unlikely that there would be some form of semi-constant fall for fifty revolution cycles - at some point, Pern would have to be out of range thanks to its own orbit. If Pern is dragging the wanderer with it, then the orbit would be utterly messed up and unpredictable, and there would also likely be no relief at all from Thread... I don't know. The way things are described, with a comet-like orbit attributed to the Red Star, it just doesn't feel like it would produce fifty revolutions of spores and then take two hundred of them off.

The colonists aren't taking any interest in the wanderer, suggesting it might either fall into the sun or exit the system again. After that, it's a quick time jump to the point where landing actually commences, with cheers as the shuttles launch to prepare the new world for its inhabitants.

While Sallah watches, the narrative spins over to Avril Bitra and Stev Kimmer, where Avril is plotting and Stev is her backup plan, now that Benden is uninterested in her. Rather than it being about sex, it's apparently about gems - Avril has a flawless ruby inherited from a member of her family seven generations back that mined it from Pern on the initial exploratory survey. (Although, with lines like "At his suspicious expression, she leaned gracefully against the small table, arms folded across her well-formed breasts, and grinned.", I think we're not supposed to forget that she's the boohissslut of this book.) Along with the notes from this distant ancestor, Avril has a plan to not "remain at the end of the galaxy on a seventh-rate world." Stev's in, because greed, and Avril knows it. All she needs now is Nabol.

I might point out that there seems to be a rather long streak of making the people who will be the namesake of various Holds like the people who will eventually be Lords of them. This seems like a storytelling shortcut, and one I'm sure fans appreciate, but I think sounds a bit like effort wasn't put in.

The story shifts to the landing of the shuttles, which goes completely smoothly, much to the consternation of the pilot, Kenjo, who had been expecting something to go wrong, and both Benden and Boll hotfoot it to be the first people setting foot on Pern as soon as the shuttle stops. As the pilot lets all the other passengers on board out, Benden and Boll give the formal welcome, claim, and naming of the planet, flanked by the standards of the Federated Sentient Planets and the new banner of Pern: "blue, white, and yellow, with the design of sickle and plow in the upper left-hand corner, signifying the pastoral nature of the colony."

There's a chapter break here, and the next section begins with the hustle and bustle of setting up a settlement and keeping everyone busy, as Sallah observes the work - including pictures of a campfire meal and a round of "Home on the Range" started by harmonica, joined by recorder, and then finally by voice - and participates in shuttle runs. Really, the best part of this is the following line: "Some wit had put up street signs with estimated distances in light-years for Earth, First Centauri, and the homeworlds of the other members of the Federated Sentient Planets." That's the kind of thing I would expect to see in colonists.

After Sallah's dry segment, the narrative shifts to the girl Sallah helped when they were unsteady on their feet in the last chapter. Sorka is uninterested in the historic nature of it all and just wants to get planetside, instead of waiting. So she goes to the garden, where she meets a boy that tells her to go away and doesn't want to say his name. Recognizing their shared accent (Irish), she gets him to open up with his name (Sean) and his love of horses, before this:

> "And no more gardai." Sorka grinned mischievously at him. She had just figured out that he must be one of the traveling folk. Her father had mentioned that there were some along the colonists. "And no more farmers chasing you out of their fields, and no more move-on-in-twenty-four-hours, or lousy halts, and no roads but the ones you make yourself, and - oh, just lots of things you really want, and none of the bad things."  
>  "Can't be all that good." Sean remarked cynically.

The fact that there are still Travelers in this supposed future society, and that they still appear to have the same stigma attached to them says the FSP is pretty clearly not a Trek-like utopia. If Pern is supposed to be utopic, whether in a positive or a Randian way, there's a lot of work being done here to set up interpersonal conflicts and societal ones. Even if you have all the land you can carry and work, it seems unlikely that everyone will be both self-sufficient and not give a damn about their neighbors.

As it is, the announcement for another shuttle drop has Sean run away after expressing some fear at it, for which Sorka tries to cheer him up with vidscreen show references. After that, there's more of the logistical drops, the impregnation of livestock (and reference to both Kitti Ping and her granddaughter, Wind Blossom, using genetic manipulation techniques to ensure the next generations can adapt, if nature doesn't produce the right results), and Sallah conversing again with Sorka's family after Avril heads off for "gravity ball" with one of the other crew members, about the anticipation of going down to the planet, and then the next day at the shuttle, where everyone goes down and Sorka gets a full view of the new planet, and its associated gravity, as Sallah and her copilot continue to make their runs. The continued insistence on conservation of fuel has Sallah look into the consumption rates and the available fuel left, where the numbers don't match, by her calculations. Sallah tucks it away as a thing to keep an eye on, after speculating a bit about who might be hoarding or hiding fuel.

> What good would it do anyone to hoard fuel? Avril? But Avril and Kenjo were not at all friendly. In fact, Avril had made snide remarks about Kenjo on several occasions, unacceptable ethnic-based slander.  
>  "Of course, if you wanted to put someone off the track ..." Sallah murmured to herself.

...from the person who had quite a bit of things to say about Avril and her ethnic heritage, just not in something that she thought looked like racism.

_[Regrettably, that's far truer than it has any right to be, as there are plenty of people in our lives who are experts at spotting the specks in other people's eyes while being unable to see the planks in theirs. The truth of it though is that Sallah and Kenjo are friends, so Sallah is more primed to see and think of negative things about Kenjo as race-based, while Sallah's ethnic-based slander (and praise, as she, after all, is comparing Tarvi to art) goes unremarked upon, because Sallah is not woke. And probably would actively resist admitting that she has those biases of her own.]_

That's another chapter break, and so we're going to stop here. I'm beginning to believe these first segments needed an axe and their plot-relevant threads to appear in flashback. That assumes, of course, that I've figured out what the plot-relevant threads even _are_.


	3. Practical Education

Last segment, the colonists arrived, the landing parties touched down, and the great exodus began.

Oh, and there's a conspiracy afoot, possibly involving greed and gemstones.

**Dragonsdawn, Part I: Content Notes: Racial stereotypes**

We open with Sorka in school, delighted that education is about getting the kids ready for life on Pern - tools and equipment to use, plants to avoid, plants to gather as foodstuffs. (Gathering is going to be a task for the young children. Even in Ninth Pass Pern.)

The younglings will get the opportunity to work with the specialists to see if any of their work has the spark that a child would want to do as their own profession through an apprentice system. The reward for the kids at the end of this will be land grants for their own selves when they're ready to live independently. When one of the kids points out that the charterers are likely to take all the good land, the instructor says that first pick is all they get, and everyone has to prove they can handle the land, before changing the subject.

At this point, Sorka has determined that the older girls are too old and excluding her, and that the younger girls are too young, so she wants to hang out with Sean, the Traveler from the previous segment, but he's not immediately visible.

The education lesson concludes with the procedure for requisition of goods, a short lecture on moderation (since theoretically everything is available, if the stores have it), and then it's time for lunch.

The physical activities after lunch have the older girls, the "city lilies", "appalled to be put to rough labor", while Sorka relishes it. And apparently has enough knack for everything that the adults and specialists try to court her as an apprentice, away from the family business as a vet, and gives her independent work with other kids that prove they can work independently.

Am I the only one here seeing the Menolly archetype at work with Sorka? And that my paranoia is starting to kick in about what might happen to her if Sorka is going to end up following in the footsteps of all the other independent and confident women in a Pern story?

After being shooed away from the boys trying to capture marine life in a tide pool, Sorka goes exploring, finding a lovely rock formation after musing on another girl getting a cave system named after her when she accidentally fell into them. And then, Sorka spots a fire-lizard. Not that she knows what it is, of course. She sees the lizard for a bit, and then it dives behind the rock formation and disappears. Hoping that it would come back, Sorka settles in to wait, but isn't rewarded for patience. So she grabs some redfruit from a tree and:

> Two things happened at once: she nearly stepped into a large hollow that was occupied by a number of pale, mottled eggs, and something dove at her, its claws just missing her head.  
>  Sorka dropped to the stone surface, peering anxiously about to see what had attacked her. It zoomed in on her again, talons extended, and she waited, as she had done once with an angry bull, to roll away at the last moment. A wave of anger and outrage swept over her, so intense that Sorka inadvertently called out.  
>  Confused by the unexpected emotions but fully aware of her immediate danger, Sorka scrambled to her feet and ran, half-crouched, to the cliff edge. Screams of rage and frustration split the air and lent speed to Sorka's descent. She heard a **whoosh** of air and ducked instinctively to evade another attack, then edged under a rocky overhang. Flattening herself against the rock face, she had an all too vivid look at her assailant, something dominated by eyes that rippled with red and orange fire. The creature's body was gold; its almost translucent wings were a paler shade against the green-blue sky, their dark frames clearly outlined.  
>  The creature screamed in confusion and surprise, and soared up, out of sight.  
>  [...Sorka gets splashed by the tide, heads to the beach, slips, hurts, and finds her cries of pain echoed by the fire-lizard...]  
>  "Are you making fun of me?" Sorka suddenly felt as irritated as if one of her peer group had taunted her. "Well, are you?" she demanded of the golden creature. Abruptly it disappeared.  
>  "Wow!" Sorka blinked, then scanned the sky for the creature, amazed by the speed with which it had disappeared from sight. "Wow! Faster than light."

Oh, yeah, she's Menolly, all right.

Also, I believe we have a winner for "this is where the book itself should begin" - a compelling mystery, a short amount of information about the world, and a main character that has some agency to explore and enough curiosity to want to. If there are important things in the previous sequences, they can probably be brought forth into later ones instead.

We can also add on "some amount of action and/or violence" as another reason why this should be the start of the book, as Sean gives Sorka an earful about spoiling his plans for the fire-lizard.

> You fecking gobshite, you iggerant townie. You skeered her away!" [...Sean gets closer...] "I've been lying doggo since dawn, hoping she'd walk into my snare, and you, you blow it all on me. Fecking useless you are!"  
>  "You'd snare her? That lovely creature? And keep her from her eggs?" Appalled, Sorka flung herself on Sean, her hands automatically flattening, her fingers tight as she sliced at the boy in hard blows. "Don't you dare! Don't you dare harm her!"  
>  Sean ducked and managed to evade the full force of her blows.  
>  "Not to harm! To tame!" he yelled, dodging with his hands up to deflect her jabs. "We don't kill nuthing. I want her. For me!"  
>  In an unexpected lunge, Sean tackled Sorka, sending her sprawling onto the sand where he fell on top of her. His longer and slightly heavier frame effectively pinned her. Recovering her breath, she squirmed, trying to angle her legs to kick at him.  
>  "Don't be so stupid, girl. I wouldn't harm her. I've been watching her for two days. An' I haven't told a soul about her."

And it's about this time that I remember they're children, and therefore I don't have to worry about this morphing into a sexual assault, as probably would have happened were the two older.

Sean mentions there's a reward out for the fire lizard, to which Sorka scoffs because this is supposed to be a society without money - everything can be requisitioned from the stores, and nobody brought coins with them except as keepsakes. You can see the cracks in that idea already - if everyone has to prove their own land, at some point, someone is going to have excess and someone is going to have deficit, and it's not going to always end up where everything is exchanged equally. Somewhere along the way, a convenient medium for exchanging value is going to develop, even if not everyone will agree on what the rates of exchange are. Or, for that matter, whose money is good where.

Sean is ready to get wagons and horses and get as far away from all the rest of these people as he can. The travelers were promised them, but Sorka says it will be almost a year before the horses are ready to go. Sorka also intuits that the fire lizard understands thoughts. After their dust-up, and Sorka reminding Sean that her dad always got on well with "your people" back on the other planet, Sorka heads back and rejoins her team to carry back the samples of wildlife they collected.

I don't like it when minority characters get the phonetic pronunciation of their accents all that much. Plus, Sorka saying "your people" probably made Sean feel like she doesn't understand a thing and further confirmed his desire to get away from all the racists in the colony.

_[Mentioned in the comments is an item from the deuterocanonical Dragonlover's Guide to Pern that said all of the Travelers, Roma, and other nomadic folks were sent on the colony ship, without having been given the choice to go or to try and stay on the world where they were, which says quite a bit about the Federated Sentient Planets and their startlingly 20th c. attitudes toward those same nomadic people. It seems like the government there saw an opportunity where some undesirable people were willingly exiling themselves, and decided to take advantage of it by also giving them people that the government wanted gone, but who weren't conveniently self-exiling. That's distressingly realistic in our 21st c. Terran times, but you would hope that a far-future multi-planet governmental system would have figured out how to tamp down on the xenophobia a lot. You would think._

_And, of course, the presence of some sort of money or value exchange is getting itself set up early on, so that when it reappears later, it's not as out of the ordinary as it was when we first encountered it. There's at least a little bit (a lot) of retroactive continuity going on here.]_

Sallah then becomes the viewpoint character for the next scene, expressing suspicion that Bitra, Nabol, and Lemos have volunteered to stay on the ship while others go down and take a weekend break on Pern. Sallah Telgar also volunteers to stay behind, so as to keep an eye on them. And continues to turn over in her head the curious case of fuel hoarding going on. (See? No real need for the first few sets, we've already accomplished what we wanted to in terms of setting up plots.) As she patrols the generally empty corridors, stripped of just about everything useful, we're treated again to some fantastic displays of prejudice:

> "Tut-tut," Boris said with a mock stern expression. "We're all Pernese now, Sal. But what's Alaskan?"  
>  "Fardles, you is the most iggerant bastard, Boris, even for a second-generation Centauran. Alaska was a territory on Earth, not far from its Arctic Circle, and cold. Alaskans had a reputation for never throwing anything away. My father never did. Must have been a genetic trait because he was reared on First, although my grandparents were Alaskan." Sallah sighed with nostalgia. "Dad never threw anything away. I had to chuck the whole nine yards before we shipped out. Eighteen years of accumulated - well, it wasn't junk, because I got good prices on practically everything in the mountain, but it was some chore. Hercules and the Agean stables were clean in comparison."  
>  "Hercules?"  
>  "Never mind," Sallah said, wondering if Boris was teasing her by pretending ignorance of old Earth legends and peoples. Some people had wanted to throw everything out, literature, legend, language, all the things that had made people so interestingly different from each other. But wiser, more tolerant heads had prevailed. General Cherry Duff, the colony's official historian and librarian, had insisted that records of all ethnic written and visual cultures be taken to Pern. Those who had craved a completely fresh start consoled themselves with the fact that anything not valid in the new context would eventually fall into disuse as new traditions were established.  
>  "You never know," Cherry Duff admonished, "when old information becomes new, viable, and valuable. We keep the whole schmear!"

The information professional has a point, here, and a very important one - much of what we might think of as just stories often contain lessons, whether practical or social ones. In new situations, and especially what intends to be a mostly agrarian society, there's a lot of reason to believe those old stories have useful nuggets in them, even if the reasons why aren't immediately apparent.

_[Also, I missed it at the time, but that's Yiddish that General Duff is speaking, which suggests that another type of ethnic ancestry is along for the ride. I'll have to pay better attention, but I think the Lilienkamp clan are much more explicitly coded as Jewish, more so than what we've seen about Joel having an eidetic memory for supplies, locations, and for bets that have been put among the people. If he were being portrayed more negatively, calling him a Shylock-expy would fit pretty well. As it is, though, I think he's got many of those stereotypes, but since he's a good guy, the stereotypes aren't played for negative results.]_

Since she's a bridge officer, Sallah uses the captain's chair to spy on what sort of things her three suspects are looking for in the computer - fuel, the locations of things in the storehouses, the nearest planet said to be habitable by humans. Sallah can't understand why someone would want to leave after they just arrived, but continues to monitor the situation. And with an offhand quip about how the shells of the ships will be nothing more than three points of light in the sky of Pern, heralding the presence of the Dawn Sisters, this segment ends.


	4. In For The Long Haul

Last time, we had the actual beginning of the book, in terms of proper action and conflict, and the first encounter with a fire lizard and two children.

**Dragonsdawn: Part One - Content Notes: Racism, sex-negativity**

This segment starts with a paragraph indicating both Sean and Sorka's families disapprove of the friendship between the two, a surefire way of making sure they continue to hang out with each other, as they both observe the gold fire lizard. It's hatching day for the eggs, so Sean and Sorka get to hear the fire lizard singing about the impending hatching, soon to be joined by other fire lizards in song. And then, feeding, as all the fire lizards create a supply line and food stash. Some tunnel snakes get bold and try for a hatchling, but get beat back by the dragonets whomping on them.

Some of the newborns make their way over to where Sean and Sorka are. Unlike Menolly, who was just trying to protect hatchlings from Threadfall, Sorka stands to up to feed them because she can feel their hunger. Sean can, too, but he has no interest in getting poked by the fire lizards. Sorka feeds a hatchling by hand, Sean has two, and before all is said and done, the two humans have Impressed three fire-lizards, not that they know this. Sean thinks about all the Travellers looking to get their own, as well as how the colonies are adapting to scavenging reptiles attacking children in their homes at night. The reptiles have bitten children in blankets, and attempts at using them as a foodstuff failed - snake flesh is poisonous and causes swelling in the mouth. So the word goes out among the Travellers that the snakes get killed, and the Travellers put in a request for dogs so as to help with that problem. The Travellers are unconvinced that the fire lizards will be all that helpful in dealing with the snakes, but they let Sean keep and look after them. Sorka's family is much more enthusiastic about the presence of the fire lizard, and several scientists stop by to help examine it as well.

> "Were you the only lucky one?" her father asked her in a low voice while the two biologists were engrossed in photographing the sleeping creature.  
>  "Sean took two brown ones home. They have an awful time with snakes in their camp."  
>  "There're homes waiting on the Canadian Square," her father reminded her. "And they'd have the place to themselves."  
>  All the ethnic nomads in the colony's complement had been duly alloted living quarters, thoughtfully set to the edge of Landing, where they might not feel so enclosed. But after a few nights, they had all gone, melting into the unexplored lands beyond the settlement.

Of course they disappeared. Since you all think of them as "ethnic nomads" and believe that they would be happy living together on the edge of town, part of the world they reject and only interact with on occasion, happy to shoulder the burden of being "those people" that everyone silently or openly accuses of being the cause of societal ills.

This is just another symptom of the racism of the Federated Sentient Planets. The language choices when discussing race to this point all try to get across the idea that racism and several other -isms are the problems of the distant past, the subjects of antiseptic language, certainly not applicable to today's time. It sounds like White people talking about how racism ended and slavery ended and all these things of the past should be gotten rid of, because they aren't needed any more. Because, of course, the White people don't see it, or because the White people use definitions that say it's done, even though it's pretty clear that there's something going on. If you accused anyone from the colony groups of being racists, they'd flatly deny it. And then arrange things so that all the nomadic groups are all together in the edge of town, because that would make them feel less constrained by the people who don't understand any of them at all. Funny how future society manages to reflect the moral sensibilities of 1980s Terra.

On the plot again, the scientists, for their part, want to take and examine the fire lizard, which distresses Sorka and prompts an intervention from her father, asking for time to have the lizard acclimate to Sorka. The scientists describe the kind of observations they'd like Sorka to make, and she correctly deduces that the fire lizard attached to her because of how hungry it was when it hatched.

These bits of knowledge that the colonists are discovering that are already woven completely into the fabric of later Pern run the risk of seeming too clever, like an author winking at us in the ninth book, instead of things coming to a more natural discovery. Also, it turns out that we should have been paying more attention to the fact that the author is living in Ireland. Sorka's Irish, but that seemed like just one of those elements for flavor, until...

> "Good work, Sorka. Just shows what old Irish know-how can achieve."  
>  "Peter Oliver Plunkett Hanrahan," his wife immediately chided him. "Start thinking Pernese. Pernese. Pernese." With each repetition she raised her voice in mock emphasis.  
>  "Pernese, not Irish. We're Pernese," Red obediently chanted. Grinning unrepentantly, he did a dance step out of the house to the tempo of "Pernese, Pernese."

...oh, right. Clearly, those people hoping that stepping on to a new world would erase differences between ethnic groups, races, and religious beliefs are deluding themselves. To the credit of the author, there aren't all that many people on this colonization trip that did think that. Most people here have instead been motivated by self-interest and greed.

_[Not even fucking Star Trek, with its Rodenberry-insisted-upon utopianism, actually tried to make any species that they spent enough time with into a monolith. And there's still some amount of national and ethnic origins for the people on board the ships. After all, The Next Generation is about a nominally French captain with a strong RP accent, and we accepted that as normal. So I don't think there was ever going to be any chance that the various heritages of the colonists were going to disappear entirely into some amalgamation of "Pernese," given that we're talking about not just divisions on a planet, but entire different planets themselves. The best we could hope for is that they're all willing to work together, but we've already blown that idea out of the water with how the colonists are casually racist toward some of their members and how factions are already starting to form, including the faction that wants to strip-mine as much as it can and then leave back on a fifteen year trip to supposedly get rich selling their assets.]_

Sorka's discovery nets her the honor of lighting the evening bonfire to the cheers of the colonists and her incredible embarrassment. Even Boll and Benden are in attendance, cheering along. Sorka tries to give credit where it's due by indicating that Sean has them, too, but she understands that such things will fall unheard and unremarked. After that, as it did in the Ninth Pass, there's a run on "dragonets", as they are officially named by the colonists. Sorka names her bronze Duke, and the colonists have to deal with the voracious appetite and the skin-cracking growth, for which her father makes a salve of "local fish oils" with a pediatrician and a biologist assisting - it's super effective, and the pediatrician has the pharmacist make more for dry skin generally. The biologists keep trying to examine Duke with equipment, except Duke keeps disappearing every time someone wants to get their hands on them. When the biologists try, Duke hyperspace hops and settles on Sorka, very angry and very unwilling to move. This makes the biologists very "Hrm. SCIENCE?" about it, but Duke is pretty adamant about not being examined by anything, and eventually, Sorka heads off to meet Sean at the place where the eggs hatched.

The narrative shifts back to Telgar, who is settling in as the other viewpoint character for this narrative (yay, two women as main characters!), as she is contemplating how to get rid of an unwanted suitor, while that suitor performs aerial stunts on an air sled. Others in the area remark on the foolishness of the stunts, but Telgar beats a hasty retreat when one of the other women, Svenda, appears. Svenda does want the suitor and takes to "snide, jealous remarks" about the matter, despite Telgar assuring us that she's not doing anything to encourage him. Her interests are apparently with a lanky engineer and miner of India-type descent, but she can't seem to get him to acknowledge her feelings in the same way that she can't get her suitor to go away.

As Telgar gets status reports from the mining team, she makes a funny and very accurate observation, prompted by seeing one of the team with a drink in hand.

> One of the first things human settlers seemed to do on any new world was to make an immediate and intensive search for fermentables, and to devise am alcoholic beverage on the quickest possible time. Every lab at Landing, no matter what its basic function, had experimented with distilling and fermenting local fruits into potable beverages. The quikal still had been the first piece of equipment assembled when the mining expedition had set up its base camp, and no one had objected when Cobbler and Ozzie had spent the first day producing imbibables from the fermented juices they had brought along. Svenda had berated them fiercely, while Tarvi and Sallah had merely carried on with the surveying. That first evening in the camp the drink had been more than a tradition: it was an achievement.

Alcohol has some interesting properties, most importantly as an antimicrobial agent (at least for Terran microbes) - if you're not sure whether the water is safe to drink, there's a good chance you can kill most, if not all, of the hostile stuff in it by using it to make alcoholic drinks. It doesn't even necessarily have to be particularly strong stuff to do the job. So, while it seems like a funny story or a thing to poke fun at people with, a working still is a useful survival tool. You can't get all your nutrition that way, of course, but it does mean being able to drink in fluids.

The talk at the mining camp is that the current site is definitely going to work as a place to establish refineries and mine metals and minerals, and then use the waterways to transport the refined metals to Landing for use. At the level of technology established by the charter, which Svenda is unhappy with and considers foolish. The other news is that everyone is requested to go back to Landing for a Thanksgiving celebration, since the last load of starship material has touched down on Pern. Sallah is unimpressed, and her suitor pinches her chin while complimenting her work ethic as an attempt at a prelude to a kiss.

> Seeing that he meant to kiss her, Sallah ducked away, grinning to take away the sting of rejection.

That's probably why he is still pursuing you, Sallah - he hasn't been given a direct and unmistakable enough no to get the hint. That's not to blame her for her choices - given how well the descendants of these men will treat the women around them, it would probably take detonating a nuclear weapon of NOPE for them to get the hint. Past that, considering that this man is already more than willing to violate her personal space and boundaries for a kiss, despite getting no explicit permissions to even consider it, there may not be any sort of thing Sallah can do to discourage that kind of behavior. So, it might be that Sallah's self-preservation that keeps her from giving a direct no signal, in case her suitor is the kind that would get violent upon rejection. One would hope that a future society would not still have douchebags like this, but again, we find that the future has the cultural norms of the Terran time period of the book.

As for Sallah's B-plot, she saw the pilot, Kenjo, continuing to hoard and stash fuel for some unknown purpose. Then she overheard Avril talking about the rich gemstone seams on the planet and their use on "civilized" worlds with Stev Kimmer, convincing him that he wants to use his stake acres to own the island where those gems are. The narrative them reminds us that Avril is supposed to be seen as crude in more than just her avarice.

> "I'm not going to live out the rest of my life in this backwater, not when I've discovered the means to live the style of life I very much prefer." Again there was that rippling laugh and then a long silence, broken by the sound of moist lips parting. "But while I'm here, and you're here, Kimmer, let's make the most of it. Here and now, under the stars."  
>  Sallah had slipped away, both embarrassed and disgusted by Avril's blatant sexuality. Small wonder Paul Benden had not kept the woman in his bed. He was a sensual man, Sallah thought, but unlikely to appreciate Avril's crude abandon for long. Ju Adjai, elegant and serene, was far more suitable, even if neither appeared to be rushing a noticeable alliance.  
>  But Avril's voice had dripped with an insatiable greed.

It's still a pretty standard trope, for whatever reason, to portray a woman with ambition as someone who will sleep with anyone to get her way. Considering the patriarchy that Pern will become, it's tactically sound to do so, I suppose, but with the descriptor we got of Avril as having ethnic features, this also becomes the trope of the black woman with the voracious sexual appetite, the opposite of Sallah's disgust and Ju's likely more repressed or slow-burning variety of interest. Avril's yet another in a long line of women being disapproved of by the narrative, although this time the narrative is using a character, rather than just stating it directly.

We're told that the distance between Pern and any of the other members of the FSP wouldn't bring anyone around to exploit the gemstones and precious metals, but Sallah is confused about why Kenjo is hoarding fuel and wonders how she can report Avril without also having to report Kenjo. She works out which of the senior staff would be best to tell about it, grouses at Avril for being selfish and working against the idea of a "secure, bountiful future, without prejudice," and then everybody goes back to Landing for the party, where Telgar tells Ongola about the whole thing. It goes over better than expected, because apparently the senior staff has been planning for the eventuality that people will cause trouble, once they realize that there's no going back and they really did sign on to be there the rest of their lives.

The party itself has a lot of musicians, dancers, and instrumentalists, all taking turns and helping with the music and song... until there's an earthquake, that is, and everyone scrambles to see what happened and where. It turns out to have been a small quake that did no damage, but now there's a team on their way to check it out. The next part picks up after the expedition went out, with the dolphins having rung the tsunami bell and complaining that none of the humans actually did anything about it, as well as status reports about the progress of plants, mining sites, and animals - in all cases, some varieties appear to be doing well, others are not thriving, and for the most part, genetic engineering is not being recommended for anyone or anything, as there's enough diversity of species so far.

_[Seriously. They knew they were landing somewhere close to what could cause some tectonic issues, and you're telling me that they didn't take any precautions to know or to check as to whether the volcanoes were active? What kind of scientists and technicians are these people, anyway?]_

At that point, we'll leave off, before Sorka starts to adventure again and likely makes another major discovery.


	5. Through the Eyes of Children

Last time, the Pern colony officially passed the point of no returning to space, the planet continued to be as advertised, and the process of bringing a full ecosystem online hit some bumps along the way, as various species of plants (like the cucumber family) and animals aren't adapting as well as had been hoped, or are being actively attacked by the Pernese ecosystem.

And Sorka's fire lizard was the talk of the town, Sallah wrestled with how to get Avril in trouble for her greed, Avril continued with her plan on how to get off the rock with enough gems to live in luxury, and Pern mentioned that it was the kind of world that had earthquakes.

**Dragonsdawn: Part One: Content Notes: Speciesism, Anti-transhumanist sentiment**

We're picking up into a chapter (an ebook chapter, anyway), after the status reports, with Sorka noticing what seems to be puffs of fire coming from her bronze as the colony's dragonets regularly go out and keep the wherries away from the chickens and other possible wherry prey. Everyone else is impressed with the tactical and team coordination abilities of the dragonets, with open speculation that the dragonets are communicating with each other, even though there's no visible signs of that. So the scientists come by to talk to Sorka, who believes the bronze is the leader of the assault team. And has strong opinions about whether the dragonets are friends or pets (friends). The scientists ask for the notes that Sorka has been keeping about feeding habits and the size of Duke, when she mentions them. Then, there's this:

> "Really, you know, this is a fascinating evolution. Especially if those plankton eaters the dolphins report could represent a common ancestor for the tunnel snakes and dragonets."  
>  Mairi was surprised. "Tunnel snakes **and** dragonets?"

I'm also interested in this, but not because they have a common ancestor, but because _they're calling them tunnel snakes_. so, apparently even the colonists have forgotten that snakes generally don't have limbs. Tunnel lizards, I would believe, but not snakes. Especially as they are described:

> "Yes, an aquatic eellike ancestor, in fact. With six limbs. The first pair -" He pointed at the dragonet still clutching his morsel in his front pincers. "-originally were nets for catching. See the action of the front claw against the stationary back pair? The dragonets dropped the net in favor of three digits. They opted for wings instead of stabilizing middle fins, while the hind pair are for propulsion. The dry-land adaptation, our tunnel snake, was to make the front pair diggers, the middle set remained balancers, especially when they have food in the front pair, and the rear limbs are for steering or holding on."

So they're hexapods, not snakes, not really. And considering they are considered pests and things that need to be killed or shooed away, I would have assumed the natural name for them would be "hexes", given the etymology. But I'm not writing this, so I don't count.

The scientists are looking for a clutch and ask if Sorka knows where one is, as well as the behavior of the older dragonets regarding protecting and imprinting of the hatchlings. And to see whether or not Sean would help them.

> Sorka regarded the zoologist for a long moment. He had always kept his word to her, and he had been very good about Duke that first day. She decided that she could trust him, but she was also aware of his high rank in Landing, and what he might be able to do for Sean.  
>  "If you promise, **promise** \- and I'd vouch for you, too - that his family gets one of the first horses, he'll do just about anything for you."  
>  "Sorka!" Mairi was embarrassed by her daughter's proposal. The girl spent entirely too much time with that boy and was learning some bad habits from him. But to her amazement, Pol smiled cheerfully and patted Sorka's arm.  
>  "Now, now, Mairi, your daughter has good instincts. Barter is already practiced as an exchange system on Pern, you know." He regarded Sorka with proper solemnity. "He's one of the Connells, is he not?" When she nodded solemnly, he went on briskly. "In point of fact, this is the first name on the list to receive equines. Or oxen, if they prefer."

I don't quite understand why there is such revulsion at striking deals, since there's no money to facilitate exchange. If it's about currying favors with the scientists, well, that spirit of communal cooperation between people with diverse skill sets is pretty much what the whole colony needs to be successful. If it's because there's some overarching desire to stamp out the idea of power differentials and get everyone into a nice socialist paradise, then the whole idea of "everyone gets their own piece of land and all the products they can coax from it" has already pretty well screwed the socialist paradise idea completely. If, instead, it's supposed to be about teaching Sorka that she has to be able to do everything herself, then her training should be more than just to join one guild. It very much seems like there are competing philosophical ideas here on Pern, and barring some sort of impending disaster, the colonies are set up to let those competing ideas try and succeed.

The bargain struck, Pol and Sorka go to find Sean and consult with him about eggs. Pol figures that he can treat Sean like any other opinionated young man, like the ones he had to deal with in academia before coming to Pern, and so, instead of offering a bonfire, which he knows won't work, he gets Sean to talk about the horse he had back on Terra, and then promises Sean an identical horse from the eggs, thanks to his ability to genetically manipulate the eggs. Sean takes the offer, and soon after, Pol, Sean and Sorka are on a ship looking for clutches on the coastline, along with an extra scientist (that turns out to suffer from motion sickness) and Captain Tillek and his crew. Sean is also a little nauseous, but Sorka is happy and Tillek is giddy to be sailing. Sorka inquires about why Tillek's map is mostly uncolored, and he explains it as a way of knowing what's unexplored, and points out the additional markings he's adding that indicate wind and current.

When the ship puts in for the night at a cove, Sean tells Sorka to go east while he goes west, which tweaks Tillek the wrong way about how he does it, but Pol stops Tillek from delivering a reprimand. Probably because Pol is more interested in the deal. But it's nice to see there's someone who wants to speak up for the women, even if he hasn't done it yet. Sean and Sorka soon return with four possible clutch locations, two likely laid by greens, two by golds. Pol and Bay (the seasick scientist) are just looking for a couple specimens, one or two of each color, to bring back and analyze, rather than trying to cart off whole clutches. We're also treated to a lecture from Pol about how poorly designed the dragonets are and how humans are even more poorly designed, with vulnerable brains and air pipes crossing food pipes in such a way that humans can choke. Tillek points out that other species have other problems, especially in the genitalia, to which Pol retorts:

> "So you think having the playground between the sewers makes sense?"  
>  "Didn't say that, Pol," Jim Tillek answered hurriedly with a glance at the two children, though neither were paying the adults much heed. "It's a bit handier for us, though."  
>  "And more vulnerable. Oh my, oh my, there I go again, falling into the lecture attitude. But there are endless ways in which we humans could be profitably improved..."

Pol, I don't think you know particularly well what getting hit between the legs is like for women. Or, for that matter, getting hit in the chest for anyone with child-nursing mammaries. If you want to talk vulnerabilities, there's plenty to go around for every body type.

Continuing on.

> "But we can't do much yet, of course, with the laws that the Pure Humans forced through to prevent drastic changes."  
>  "Who'd want to?" Tillek asked with a frown.  
>  "Not us," Bay assured him hastily. "We don't have that kind of need on this world. But I sometimes feel that the Pure Human Life Group was wrong to oppose alterations that would permit humans to use those water worlds in Ceti IV. Lungs exchanged for gills and webbing on hands and feet is not that great or blasphemous an adaptation. The fetus still goes through a similar stage **in utero** , and there's good evidence for a more aquatic past for adults. Think how many planets would be open to humans if we weren't so limited to land areas that met our gravitational and atmospheric requirements! Even if we could provide special enzymes for some of the dangerous gases. Cyanides have kept us out of so many places. Why..." She threw up her hands as words failed her.

Hrm. There was hopefully a very interesting discussion that happened between the Pure Humans and the transhumans about what makes humans humans and whether or not persons with those adaptations would be treated as having full human rights under the law or whether there would have been another series of angry conflicts regarding rights and privileged people and possible slavery. In the best case, the Pure Humans passed through a bill that said "no, you don't get to alter humans unless you pass bills that say the altered humans are still humans and will not be discriminated against at all." In the worst, the Pure Humans passed the bill to ensure that only unaltered humans would be called humans, showing their speciesist selves to their most xenophobic, and preventing the discussion from happening in the first place, condemning everyone to yet another iteration of the "we hate and want to try and subjugate those who are different than us" bullshit.

_[Given that the nation-states of Terra have pretty well flopped on most of the opportunities they've had to accept and embrace the other rather than hate or try to subjugate them, I'm not holding out a lot of hope for the Pure Human Life Group having been one of the good people. But that might be an overly cynical perspective from someone who is watching a person stoke xenophobia and hatred of just about any Other he can throw at his base, and even worse, watching it essentially work with them. And because of political realities, being able to get teh base to do something is enough for it to become the policy of the entire country, officially, even if some regions very definitely do not want that to be the official policy. This story is one of the ones where you go "man, we're messed up on this planet, and it's going to show through even in our supposedly better-designed future world playing at the past."]_

The plot continues with Sean getting up very early to sneak off and Sorka following after Sean leaves the cave. Sorka almost trips over the cache in a daydream about wanting to find the most beautiful spot, and almost gets so distracted by the hatching dance that she wouldn't get the egg she swipes back to Bay. Having managed to get things in the right place at the right time, Bay ends up Impressing a gold, and then Sean comes back to camp with two dragonet corpses in tow. Everyone settles in to food, having achieved the mission they intended.

The narrative is about to shift characters again, so here's a good stopping point. We'll pick up with the Avril plot next time.


	6. B-Plot Boogie

Last time, scientists and children went hunting for dragonets to study. Sean brought back corpses, Sorka brought back a dragonet egg that hatched and Impressed on one of the scientists.

**Dragonsdawn: Part One: Content Notes: Colonialism, dubious consent**

The action starts with Benden, Boll, and Ongola having a meeting about Telgar's discoveries. Before settling into the description, though, we learn a little bit more about what the intended form of government for the Pern colony is.

> Once the colonists took up their stake acres and Landing's purpose had been accomplished, the ostensible leaders would turn consultants, with no more authority than other stakeholders. The council would convene regularly to discuss broad topics and redress problems that affected the entire colony. A yearly democratic meeting would vote on any issues that required the consent of all. Magistrate Cherry Duff [the historian and librarian] administered justice at Landing and would have a circuit for grievances and any litigation. By the terms of the Pern Charter, charterers and contractors alike would be autonomous on their stake acres. The plan was idealistic, perhaps, but as Benden repeatedly insisted, there were more than enough plans and resources to allow everyone plenty of latitude.

I'd almost say that sounds like Soviet-style organization, but really, it's more a model of Athenian democracy than anything. Most interesting, though, is the presence of the magistrate to handle issues between the autonomous landowners. I can see at least one creative exception - anyone smart enough to lead the other party in to their land can do whatever they want to do to them, it seems, including lovely things like lies, cheats, and thievery. Or possibly even murder. There, dispute resolved. Presumably, the presence of the Council and the magistrate are supposed to be a signal that the sovereign autonomy of the plots of land is limited in some method and subservient to a higher power, but outside the context of Landing, there's not any explicit acknowledgement of anyone being a higher power on someone's private property, elected or no, once the actual charter kicks in. Which seems to be a great seeding point for the system of Lords that is in place later on.

_[Magistrate Duff, as librarian and historian in addition to those duties, is going to be the archetype of the Harper Hall later on, although they still have to have the education aspect grafted on, and there's going to be business about a College of artists and scientists as well that will eventually become the Harpers, but this particular person with interest in knowledge and justice is likely going to be our prototype Harper.]_

In the interim, the colony council has set up an arbitration board to handle grievances, stake acres and contract issues, persuaded by Boll that disputes are best settled by impartial bodies and juries by recalling to their minds the amount of war they had suffered through and the reality that they are the only humans on Pern, so that's more than enough space for everyone to thrive without the need for greed.

The next paragraph tells us that Boll is not such an idealist as to believe everyone agrees with her, but she hopes that people who would otherwise cause trouble will get too involved in building their own lives on the planet to cause trouble for others. Which is itself followed by two paragraphs about whether or not the colonies need a penal code - Benden favors immediate justice based on shaming people who act against the common good, and so far, it seems to be working. Both Benden and Boll keep office hours for six days a week (the week itself, along with the day of rest, having been established at one of the mass meetings where Boll suggests that the "old Judean Bible used by some of the old religious sects" has plenty of sensible suggestions for an agrarian society that can be taken without having to them take all the rest of the religious material that goes with it.

If you're familiar with that work, there are also sections in our about not harvesting to the very edge of your fields, so that those less fortunate than you can find things to eat, that debts should be forgiven on a regular basis, and that every so often, one should let the land rest completely, and not harvest anything that should appear for that entire year, leaving it for the poor and nature. (Also, Judean Bible? What the blistering fuck is that?) There's a lot in there about hospitality and how to treat other people. Looking at the future world of Pern, it seems those parts were not kept and passed forward.

> While the two leaders understood that even that loose form of democratic government might be untenable once the settlers had spread out from Landing to their own acres, they did hope that the habits acquired would suffice. Early American pioneers on that western push had exhibited a keen sense of independence and mutual assistance. The late Australian and New Zealand communities had risen above tyrannical governors and isolation to build people of character, resource, and incredible adaptability. The first international Moonbase had refined the art of independence, cooperation, and resourcefulness. The original settlers on First had largely been the progeny of ingenious Moon and asteroid-belt miner parents, and the Pern colony included many descendants of those original pioneering groups.  
>  Paul and Emily proposed to institute yearly congregations of many people from the isolated settlements as possible to reaffirm the basic tenets of the colony, acknowledge progress, and apply the minds of many to address any general problems. Such a gathering would also be the occasion for trading and social festivities.

So, here we see the seeds of what will eventually become the Gather festival, and the inclusion of the Conclave of Lord Holders on those days - although I suspect the Gathers of later Passes happen more than just once a year.

Beyond that, though, there is this genealogy of the Pernese settlement, tracing its history back to the American West, a heavily romanticized period. I'm not as familiar with the history of Australia and New Zealand, but I suspect there's a similar thread of narrative involving Intrepid White People finding a land full of indigenous peoples and "civilizing" it through systematic occupation, oppression, and disenfranchisement, and then creating their own narrative that the place was "wild and untamed" that needed Strong, Rugged Frontiersmen. The Moonbase is the odd entity out and the closest to the actual Pern settlement, since we know that Luna has no indigenous humanoids. (First Centauri, I would guess, did, and there was a lot of war involved in that encounter.) When combined with the racism in the colony and the willingness to overlook that racism, the colony is likely to get some rude reminders of the past they have not yet overcome. Instead of admitting they are there to get away from a lifestyle and worlds they no longer believe in, they want to recast themselves as explorers and the people looking to discover the unknown. It's a bit surreal to be watching this kind of colonialism play out in an actual colony that is supposed to be beyond those kinds of ideas, being a future society and all that.

_[And there are sentient native life forms on Pern. None of them look like humans, or can communicate in human language (at least, not until after the process by which they've been bonded to the humans through Impression), so I'll bet these colonizers really do think of themselves as the intrepid explorer types conquering a natural frontier. Which might have been another reason why the FSP was pretty happy to get rid of them. Additionally, and still regrettably, the colonists are looking for their own advantages and prejudices. And yet, still, the narrative continues to insist that this is supposed to be utopic.]_

As for the actual plot, there's some recalcitrance among the executive committee about their secret observations of people who might turn out to be troublemakers for the colony. Benden is okay with it as part of necessary intelligence-gathering. Boll thinks of it as too close to the secret police and other tactics of other worlds and times. Ongola stalls out the argument before it goes too far by indicating that the only craft that could go has already been sabotaged and there's always things in the way of a clear takeoff for the craft anyway. Feeling like any potential mischief has been managed, the executive team talks a little about Kenjo's fuel efficiency, but they have no idea why he did it or how he plans to move it to his own property. Then they talk about volcanoes and tremors, the death of a dolphin, and the general state of the colony and the nomads, as Boll hopes for a quick conclusion so that she can get to a nice dinner with Pierre, the head chef for the colony, muses on the nature of calligraphy and analog memory aids, and Benden enjoys brandy.

We do get a nice peek at how one institution has changed from Terra.

> In order to widen the gene pool in the next generation, the charter permitted unions of varying lengths, first insuring the support of a gravid woman and the early years of the resultant child. Prospective partners could choose which conditions suited their requirements, but there were severe penalties, up to the loss of all stake acres, for failing to fulfill whatever contract had been agreed and signed before the requisite number of witnesses.

Which makes me wonder what gets put into contracts, if the penalties are that severe. And whether anyone has yet created caskets of silver, gold, and lead.

Ongola boasts about his marriage and the resultant pregnancy, which makes Benden relieved that Ongola is not holding on to his grief of lost wife and family in the Nathi war. Ongola then asks whether Boll has managed to snag Pierre yet, which flusters her and she deflects on to Benden and asks if he's going to do this, too. He provides no answer, and then the narrative shifts over to Sallah, who is still courting Tarvi, and has finally managed to go out on a mission with him alone.

_[The comments also point out the glaring problem of trying to figure out how to enforce contracts when you lack a penal code and an overarching authority that can be used when people who are nominally autonomous come into conflict with each other. If everyone is sovereign on their own land, there's almost no way of making sure that everyone sticks to their word on things. Benden's plan to use shunning won't actually work, but the concept gets mined in the Todd books to produce an underclass called the Shunned, who are supposed to display their status openly, and any citizen who doesn't refuse to have anything to do with them also risks becoming Shunned. Naturally, this creates a lot of business opportunities on the black market, rather than the exile that Benden was hoping for.]_

> Sallah was playing it cautiously, concentrating on making herself so professionally indispensable to Tarvi that an opportunity to project her femininity would not force him to retreat into his usual utterly courteous, utterly impersonal shell. She had seen other women who made a determined play for the handsome, charming geologist rebuffed by his demeanor; they were surprised, puzzled, and sometimes hurt by the way he eluded their ploys. For a while, Sallah had wondered if Tarvi liked women at all, but he had shown no preference for the acknowledged male lovers in Landing. He treated everyone, man, woman, and child, with the same charming affability and understanding. And whatever his sexual preference, he was nonetheless expected to add to the next generation. Sallah was already determined to be the medium and would find the moment.

_[Apply one Cocowhat here.]_

Yes, I realize that we're several decades in front of the popular culture coming to realize that asexuality is a thing, but surely it's possible that if Tarvi's not interested in women, and not interested in men, and presumably not interested in anyone who doesn't fit either of those identities, then maybe Tarvi _isn't fucking interested in fucking_. So this bit about expectations of the next generation and Sallah's determination to fulfill them...it makes me worry that the author decided that the new! exciting! thing for this story is that the rape of the unwilling will be a woman committing it on a man. Please, please, let me be wrong.

Sallah is hoping to entice Tarvi with the prospect of caves to explore. Officially, it's confirming the presence of metals and ores, as well as photographing interesting sites for people to choose as their locations, where a short digression indicates that the wine-growers are looking for specific lands to put their grapes on. Tarvi bites on the exploration part, and apparently is unaware as he steamrolls her plans for romance by being far more interested in climbing cliffs and exploring the great giant cave system that looks like it would make a great Great Hall and supporting structures. And then drawing accurate maps and dimensions of the system as well. When they stop for the evening meal, Sallah spikes Tarvi's food with something the pharmacists say is an aphrodisiac, which... seems to do nothing at all, as Tarvi continues to talk about how the cave system itself would make a great fortress. Tarvi appears to be stiff, so Sallah gives him a massage to work out the kinks of the climbing, which she eventually stops as a massage and just turns into caresses. Eventually, he catches her hands, but it's not a passionate embrace or a declaration of love.

> "Perhaps this is the time," he mused as if alone. "There will never be a better. And it must be done."  
>  With the suppleness that was as much a trademark of Tarvi Andiyar as his ineffable charm, he gathered her in his arms, pulling her across his lap. His expression, oddly detached as if examining her for the first time, was not quite the tender, loving expression she had so wished to evoke. His expressive and large brown eyes were almost sad, though his perfectly shaped lips curved in an infinitely gentle smile - as if, the thought intruded on Sallah's delight in her progress, he did not wish to frighten her.  
>  "So, Sallah," he said in his rich low and sensual voice, "it is you."  
>  She knew she should interpret that cryptic remark, but then he began to kiss her, his hands suddenly displaying an exceedingly erotic mind of their own, and she no longer wished to interpret anything.

...

...

_Double the Cocowhats, because of double the not-fun.]_

That doesn't look like any sort of consent, or even really lust or desire, on Tarvi's part. If the aphrodisiac is really responsible for this behavior, then Sallah, you took advantage of him. Using basically the same idea that someone might use in trying to get a woman too drunk to be able to fight back or spiking her drink with a date rape drug. Which should receive all the condemnation possible, but Tarvi doesn't necessarily know and there aren't any other witnesses.

And the narrative is going to spiral away from this back somewhere else, rather than deal with the morning after.

I dislike being right about this. Strongly.

_[Time has only made this sequence worse, because ace people are definitely a thing, and Sallah basically decided she was going to have him and did everything she could to get him to have sex with her. One wonders whether Tarvi saw this and said, "well, I'm not sex-repulsed, and if it will get Sallah to lighten up, then perhaps I can give her what she wants, and things will be okay." There's a distressing lack of insight into his behaviors and desires, and what he says definitely does not sound like enthusiastic consent in any way at all. Even if he's quite capable, and perhaps he gets into it more as he goes along, but this whole thing shouldn't have started without a much more enthusiastic response from Tarvi._

_Also, this determination to get what she wants, at all costs, and without regard for anyone around her? That's the defining trait of Telgar Weyr, even when the favored by the narrative characters are in charge of it. (Fiona is better, in many ways, about this than her predecessors, but there are still some things that she won't back down on and will have everyone else bend to her will on. So, yeah, the people in charge of named things take on or already have the aspects of the people the places are named after. That has to be one hell of a terrible curse for everyone to deal with.]_


	7. The Morning After

Last time, there was a lot of governance and philosophy around keeping an eye on potential troublemakers, and then the narrative snuck off to watch Sallah drug her otherwise ace love interest with an apparently effective aphrodisiac and then have sex with him. And we're supposed to be okay with that, like all the other instances of sexual assault and rape in this series.

**Dragonsdawn: Part One and Part Two: Content Notes: Depictions of Death**

The narrative zips back to Landing, where animal births and dragonets are the order of everything - the dragonets are extremely effective at keeping the sheep and goats protected.

Oh, and Pol and Bay discover what happens when dragonets that are Impressed mate with each other, and then decide to put in for shared housing afterward. Because of this, there's permission sought and granted to enhance the empathic abilities of the dragonets with "mentasynth" techniques. Which works quite well, and generates some new issues - enhanced dragonets communicate their emotional states very well, for example. And the dragonets can tell without fail when someone is about to give birth, animal or human, so the obstetricians just have to spot dragonets on a roof to know where they're going to be needed, and can tell how well things are progressing by listening to the intensity of the dragonet songs.

The actual action of this section is a mare giving birth to the colt that will become the copy horse that Sean bargained for. Sean is very happy to see him, but has apparently maintained skepticism about the matter, and continues to do so as to whether this horse will turn out completely the same. Which utterly pisses Sorka off, and she storms away, leaving Sean completely confused as to why. Red offers no help whatsoever on that regard to Sean, but then privately muses about the relationship between the two that he sees. That his daughter has been menstruating for a year at this point, and clearly dotes on Sean, who has improved his reading and writing skills and taken a real shine to animal husbandry. Others are seeing them as a couple, and Red isn't sure if this exasperation is the beginning of a new phase. Sorka has had sex ed, after all, but Red feels out of his depth and resolves to talk to his wife about the matter. His second trimester pregnant wife that's working at the day care center, that is. I don't quite think that anyone has yet figured out that empathic dragonets affect people other than just their impressed partners with their emotional states.

The narrative sends us back into Avril's perspective, where she is irritated at people not telling her things, somewhat suspicious of her allies, and then lets slip her actual purpose for joining the expedition to us - she wanted to rule the planet. Lest this be seen as legitimate ambition, right after that motivation is revealed, Avril recalls lying her way through the lie detector that was supposed to weed her out. Having failed to secure Benden, Avril now just wants to get away on a ship, and is unafraid of using her sexuality to assemble a cast of useful cronies. And to possibly try and foment sufficient discord to overthrow Benden and rule the planet herself. Which hasn't happened yet. So, instead, she's biding her time.

> As if anyone on this goody-good world is checking up on anyone else! "We are all equal here." Our brave and noble leaders have so ordained it. With equal rights to share in Pern's wealth. You just bet. Only I'll get my equal share before anyone else and shake this planet's dirt off my boots!

It seems like this should have been part of the plan - give everyone the option of returning back to the FSP with whatever wealth they have accumulated after a set amount of time, in case they get buyer's remorse or they find that they can't hack it in a low technology world. They only have the one opportunity, of course, and nothing else, but it seems like after three to five years, those who want to go will know it.

Avril is meeting with Stev Kimmer at this point, and he shows her emeralds and other gemstones that he has already pulled out. In her calculating way, Avril makes with the politeness and interest, even as she still tries to figure out how she managed to have Benden lose interest in her. And she's rather miffed about having received a tiny share, despite being the navigator that got the colony ships safely to their destination. Returning out of her reverie at the impatience in Stev's voice, they both head off to discover and see more of the gemstones. And this ends Part One.

I still feel like much of this part could have been deleted or moved to a place like the Dragonlover's Guide, as it feels a lot more like the history of the colony, through the perspectives of a few people, than the beginning of a story. Avril hasn't exactly made a whole lot of progress on her plan, and the bits not involving Sean, Sorka, and the dragonets have mostly been nods to other things and logistics. In terms of having a plot, this segment really doesn't. And then Part Two starts with Threadfall, right at the beginning.

We also get the earliest recorded date of Pern - 4.5.08, which makes me wonder again what the actual months and years are like on Pern, considering the only official designation so far has been the seven day week. If everything is the same as it is on Terra in terms of rotational period and revolution period, great, but that should probably have been explicitly acknowledged somewhere.

Also, in between the two parts, there has clearly been a time skip, as the child that was still in Sabra's womb is now three years old.

In any case, Part Two opens with Sabra Stein-Ongola trying to puzzle out why the family dragonet is trying to keep the family inside, after the dolphins have been trying to explain that marine life have been rushing to food and the herders are trying to figure out why the dragonets are trying to keep the animals inside. Nobody understands the danger coming, of course - it looks like a gray cloud off in the distance, threatening rain, perhaps, but not anything more. Sabra notices the conspicuous lack of dragonets, even though there's a birth impending, and tries to get a hold of someone about it.

The dragonets, on the other hand, go to whom they think will be able to understand best - Sean and Sorka. Who sort the pictures they're getting from their respective fairs and then notice the oddity of the cloud that is arriving. Before they do anything about it, though, the dragonets spur their horses into a panic gallop back toward shelter, with the dragonets providing stabs and spurs every time the horses try to obey their riders. The available shelter, in this case, is under a ledge in a deep lake in a ravine. Eventually the two get a proper look at what they are running from.

> "Why?" Sorka still asked. "It's only rain coming." She was swimming beside Doove [her horse], one hand on the pommel of her saddle, the other holding the reins, letting the mare's efforts drag her forward. "Where'd they all go?"  
>  Sean, swimming alongside Cricket [his horse], turned on his side to look back the way they had come. His eyes widened. "That's not **rain**. Swim for it, Sorka! Swim for the ledge!"  
>  She cast a glance over her shoulder and saw what had startled the usually imperturbable young man. Terror lent strength to her arm; tugging on the reins, she urged Doove to greater efforts. They were nearly to the ledge, nearly to what little safety that offered from the hissing silver fall that splatted so ominously across the woods they had only just left.

When it arrives to the lake, the horses are in full panic, the fish are ready to eat their fill, and Sean and Sorka observe the dragonets puffing flames at the Thread as it falls, keeping them and the horses safe.

> "Jays, Sean, look what it does to the bushes!" She pointed to the shoreline. The thick clumps of tough bushes they had ridden through only moments before were no longer visible, covered by a writhing mass of "things" that seemed to enlarge as they watched. Sorka felt sick to her stomach, and only intense concentration prevented her from heaving her breakfast up. Sean had gone white about the mouth. His hands, moving rhythmically to keep him in position in the water, clenched into fists.

Watching Thread at work is apparently very nauseating. But here we are again, with someone on Pern in the water, under a ledge, while the Thread rains down around them, and with a runnerbeast, err, horse, that is. And about the right age, too, for both Menolly and her fair and Piemur and his Stupid. History repeats, apparently.

Back at Landing, Bay agrees the behavior of the dragonets is odd to Sabra and goes to get Pol, who doesn't like the look of the incoming clouds, right before the dragonets return in force and basically herd everyone inside, stinking of sulfur and agitation. They've also brought friends to make sure all the life forms get inside. We get another look at what happens when Thread touches a thing.

> They could see the individual elongated "raindrops" strike the surface, sometimes meeting only dust, other times writhing about the shrubs and grasses, which disappeared, leaving behind engorged sluglike forms that rapidly attacked anything green in their way. Pol's nicely sprouting garden became a waste of squirming grayish "things", bloating larger within seconds on each new feast.  
>  [...Thread continues...]  
>  She had been shocked by the sight of a full-grown cow reduced in a few moments to a seared corpse covered by a mass of writhing strings.

Pol observes the inability of Thread to eat stone and the vulnerability of plastics, while Bay points out the firepower the dragonets are bringing and their living shield over the house that is bringing a new life into the world during the Fall. The narrative does a quick flip to Ongola, who is sounding the alarm as he deals with having been hit by Thread, trying to raise all the hunters and fishers out and about, so as to try and get them under shelter, and showing us how he ended up getting hit, the way the Thread ate his wool sweater, and the vulnerability it has to water. The settlements report in and send offers of aid, including one Sallah Telgar-Andiyar. So, apparently, that one night in the caves was enough for both of them to form a contract partnership. I do really wish we knew what Telgar's victim had thought about this whole affair and what went into the discussions about partnerships, but I guess we won't get any of that.

In passing, it's noted that the Thread cloud didn't register on any meteorological instruments, so there wasn't any advance warning before the dragonets started trying to protect everyone. Even with the dragonets, the casualties of everyone who has gone out, and of the nomadic camps, is severe, since Thread eats just about everything, including some of the building materials for houses. It's a bit convenient to have all the ethnic nomads basically reduced to a tiny fragment of their previous selves, which I'm sure will make the unacknowledged racists a little happier that their planet is no longer contaminated by different groups.

_[It's certainly possible that Threadfall escapes most meterological instruments, but it would be a black swan event even with 20th c. Terran equipment. One would think that all the experience of working on other worlds would have improved those instruments to be able to detect a much greater amount of possibilities. And yet, because we need something to make people afraid, we have Thread slip through the net meant to warn people about it. Just watching it at work would be enough to terrify most people, especially as they watched their work get eaten.]_

As it is, the main administrators and scientists convene to try and get answers and explanations - the otherwise unexplained pockmarks now have an explanation, and according to those that investigated, the period of time between attacks is about 150 years. Which leaves the only unanswered question as to how long the attack will last. Thus ends the first segment of Part Two.


	8. Retreat and Recovery

Last time, the colony suffered widespread fatalities and casualties from Threadfall, which was invisible to the meteorological instruments. Only the intervention of dragonets and the luck of having shelters with Thread-immune outer coverings prevented a total colony kill. 

**Dragonsdawn, Part Two: Content Notes: None noticed.**

Let's talk about that for a minute. We're supposed to believe that a large mass of spores in a tight formation evaded detection from weather instruments while similar entities composed of dust, ice, and water vapor would be picked up. And, for that matter, the survey team that first visited the planet did not conduct surveys of the other bodies in the system, including the other planets, the moons, and the wanderer that was passing through the area. (Have I said this before? It seems like I have.) Even if their data indicated that Pern was the only habitable planet for humans, someone surely would have noticed the masses of spores, even dormant, as a curiosity. And, apparently, Landing was the first site for the first Fall of the Pass - there hadn't been any other location where a previous Fall might have gone, so that the instruments might notice what was going on elsewhere in the world. Humans are not exactly the best at pattern-spotting, sure, but this kind of devastation event seems like even the pre-tech society should be able to spot. Also, see all previous discussions about how the native life of Pern appears to never have evolved any sort of defense against Thread, excepting the dragonets. The narrative is robbing the colonists of understanding and perspective by having the only evidence of Thread be the circles of destruction.

The actual text begins with the aftermath of the disaster, with the wounded shipped in, and the two psychologists for the colony (the first mental health professionals mentioned on Pern!) pulling full shifts and then some for the grief and counseling needed.

Right after that, Sean's father reveals himself to be the great-ancestor of Lord Tolocamp, having sent his wife and oldest daughter to help with disaster recovery, while he hid in his cave system and expected his son's stallion to impregnate all the mares there.

Ongola notes that the only people that haven't checked in are the mining camp with Our Villains. Rather than raise a party to go and check on them, it's just a note. I would have thought someone would check, if for no other reason than to make sure they're dead, and thus no longer a threat to the order of Pern. Because this is the right opportunity for someone to have a go at it.

The callbacks continue with the dragonets now being the moniker "fire-dragons" and the colonists naming the whole incident "Threadfall" (even though I have no idea how they would do so or why they would do so, since the behavior of the parasite very quickly stops it from being thread-like). Complicating analysis of Thread is that soon after it feeds, if it gets no other food, it dies. Further complicating matters is that fed Thread apparently had no upper bound of growth, as a segment of Thread accidentally discovered on a fishing vessel and "judicious"ly fed until it could get to Landing grew from a bit in a bait bucket to needing" the biggest heavy-gauge plastic barrel" on board the ship, grown to "a gross meter long and perhaps ten centimeters in diameter" when put in an observational cage. The assembled scientists try to figure out the origin, with Tillek pointing out the coincidence of the big red morning star rising and the appearance of the Thread, and then go to work analyzing and determining what just hurt their community.

Apparently, one night is all that was expected for solutions, as grumbles begin and demands are made of the scientists for answers the next morning. The news that they've kept a sample alive to study angers the grieving more.

> "I'm a father first, and my daughter was... devoured by one of those creatures. So was Joe Milan, and Patsy Swann, Eric Hegelman, Bob Jorgensen, and..." Tubberman's face was livid. His fists clenched at his sides, his whole body strained with rage and frustration. He glared accusingly at Emily and Paul. "We trusted you two. How could you bring us to a place that devours our children and all we've achieved the past eight years!" The murmurs of the delegation supported his accusation. "We"-his wide gesture took in the packed numbers behind him-"want that thing dead. You've had long enough to study it. C'mon, people. We know what we have to do!" With a final bitter, searing look at the biologists, he turned, roughly pushing aside those in his path. "Fire kills it!"  
>  He stomped off, raging. His followers left without him.  
>  "It won't matter what they do, Paul," Mar Dook said, restraining Paul Benden from going after Ted. "The beast is moribund now. Give them the corpse to vent their feelings on. We've about finished what examinations we can make anyhow." He shrugged wearily. "For all the good it does us."

Wait.

This colony has been going for eight years and can't detect a meteorological event? That seems fishy. As does someone not noticing the return of the wandering planet using their telescopes and possibly even getting a good look at what's on the surface of it. If Wansor can manage it with his telescope, surely those people who are astronomers in this colony can with theirs. For everyone to be caught by surprise sounds a lot more like narrative blinkering than anyone not noticing until it was too late. In just a few paragraphs, telescopes will be trained on the wandering planet in getting to determine if it is the source of Thread. Yet nobody has apparently done this already, despite the fact that it's an eccentric-orbit world that may or may not actually be there for a good long while.

Also, one night is not long enough to determine useful information about anything, even if you have a phalanx of scientists working on it.

_[It really isn't. Dealing with a novel situation that has to do with an organism that is otherwise unknown, to the point where an effective vaccine might be developed, tested, confirmed efficacy, and so forth is in the range of 12-18 months for 21st c. Terra, and that's with having living samples of the stuff to go at it with. There's no way that they can get anything good out of one night of study, other than going "well, that's a something, and it's deadly, and now we know what it looks like and what the dragonets are going to do when it comes again."]_

The assembled team speculates whether or not Thread is an invasion weapon or an item designed to kill the colonists, both dismissed by Pol as "a suggestion from the fiction of the Age of Religions". Which, no, Pol, religion does not just vanish in The Future, because humans will find things to be spiritual about, even when science has plumbed the vast depths of the universe and can provide natural explanations for just about everything. The only point in which religion dies of when science conclusively proves what lies beyond human existence. In essence, religion dies when Universal A.C. solves The Last Question. At which point, religion begins again.

The psychologists suggest that catharsis brought on by burning the cage the now dead Thread was in could be helpful with the grieving process, so Paul and Emily let Ted Tubberman incinerate the cage. It's apparently not enough, however, and the psychologist continues to monitor him as he goes on a crusade to set fire to any Thread shell he finds.

The scientists more go back through the data they have about the original survey and their own observations, concluding that the wanderer's orbit is about 250 years, some subset of which is spent close enough to Pern to potentially drop spores, as they determine the break in between incursions is 200 years. They also conclude that the survey team's visit to the planet happened right after a cycle of Threadfall, where the team noted the aftermath without being able to connect it to anything. (The survey team didn't think it odd, apparently, that a large swath of the country had significant amounts of new growth and others had quite a bit of very old growth.)

They also go exploring and find that there are two signs of previous Threadfall, one on the North, which is uninhabited, and one on an island where it was reported as having been more of rain with black specs. At Landing, however, the calls to figure out how long the rain will last increase, and the speculation starts to take on more alarming interpretations. Even sending one of the space probes to investigate produces only more information and no conclusions. Kenjo eventually comes in with new information - some of the circles of destruction have no husks associated with them, as if the Thread has burrowed and is now progressing to a new stage of life. The scientists slip out on small groups to study this, but their efforts yield no immediate fruit, and they are pulled from their work by communication indicating a new Fall on its way. Landing dispatches people equipped with flamethrowers and HNO3 canisters, which will apparently affect the Thread "like using fire _and_ water at once" on it. I don't understand the reasons why nitric acid would be super-effective against Thread, but they don't seem to be thinking of using nitric acid as a flamethrower fuel, which is nice.

For the most part, though, the scientists and leaders of Landing go about and observe and make sure that the affected areas are prepared - their crops are toast, but the people that built stone structures can wait out the Thread, and the defense party applies fire and acid to any Thread still alive, while noting that water and rain both are potential killers to Thread that comes in contact. That said, the bigger problem of what to do with the planetwide menace remains unsolved. The pictures of the devastation help the colonists decide that their Randian fantasies will have to be put on hold until the existential threat is dealt with. Which involves rigging improvised weaponry, it appears.

> Tarvi drafted a crew to work round the clock, adapting empty cylinders into flamethrowers and filling them with HNO3. The easily made oxidant had not only proved to be very effective at destroying Thread but could be synthesized cheaply from air and water, using only hydroelectricity, and was not a pollutant. Most importantly, dragonet hide and human skin were not usually not severely damaged from spillage. A wet cloth, applied within about twenty seconds, prevented a bad burn.

I don't have the requisite chemistry knowledge, but the wisdom of the Internet suggests nitric acid is not flammable at all, and is instead corrosive to the point where reacting with a base or an organic compound can cause the organic compound and the acid to ignite. So trying to light the stuff on fire seems like a bad idea, and that instead, these flamethrowers should be called sprayers or something else. The new sprayers and some flamethrowers are also mounted to the airsleds so that the colonists can mount a defense of burning Thread out of the sky before it gets to the ground.

Additionally, even though they have long since stepped down from a leadership position, Benden, Boll, Keroon, Tillek, and Ongola start finding other people asking them to make decisions. A colony psychologist (who finally gets a name - Tom Patrick) says that someone has to take the reins and oppose Ted Tubberman.

> "I don't think you can stall a showdown much longer," he said, "or you and Emily will lose all credibility. That would be a big error. You two may not want to take command, but someone will have to. Tubberman's constantly undermining community effort and spirit. He's so totally negative that you ought to be thankful that most of the time he's out trying singlehandedly to clear the continent of rotting Threadshell. Grief had totally distorted his perceptions and judgment."  
>  "Surely no one believes his ranting?" Emily asked.  
>  "There're just enough long-buried gripes and resentments, and good honest gut-fear, right now that some people do listen to him. Especially in the absence of authorized versions," Tom replied. "Tubberman's complaints have a certain factual basis. Warped, to be sure." The psychologist shrugged, raising both hands, palms up. "In time, he'll work against himself - I hope. Meanwhile he's roused a substantial undercurrent of resentment which had better be countered soon. Preferably by you gentlemen and Emily and the other captains. They still trust you, you know, in spite of Tubberman's accusations.

Remember in part one where Avril thought that if she couldn't get off the rock and back to civilization, she'd settle for disputing the colony and trying to take it over for herself? We have a perfectly suitable villain for the narrative, and since the narrative hasn't shown any qualms to this point about wallowing in negative stereotypes, why not tack a few more on to Avril and make her the antagonist? Instead, she's just off on her own island, apparently unconcerned with this clear discontent brewing, still existing in this unknown state because nobody decided to go and check on her. If she turns up later, twirling a mustache, I will wonder about the intelligence of the nominal leaders of the colony.

Who are currently plotting to get the stakeholders to call a meeting of their own volition so the stakeholders will elect them to emergency rule all while believing it was their own idea to do so. Because that's the only way the colony itself will survive Thread. Maybe we don't need outside villains when the heroes are more than manipulative enough.

The meeting does get called, and the seniormost legist (lawyer), Cabot Francis Carter, starts with a rousing speech about how human ingenuity can beat most problems and that the planet itself is by far better than the inconvenience of Thread. Having primed the audience, he delivers the suggestion that stake autonomy be suspended temporarily and a central government reformed until the menace is handled. Ted Tubberman counter-suggests sending back to Earth for aid, but is shouted down by the colonists remembering what happened to a different colony that requested help - it took fifty years for a response, and the debt and obligations that came with it were crushing. Ted tries again, this time betting the colonists won't want to be cooped up with each other while Thread rains outside, but he is again shouted down by voices suggesting Thread is nothing more than a challenge to be solved, and that humans excel at solving challenges. Ted calls for a vote, and is voted down on sending for help. Soon after, the colonists vote to temporarily reinstate Boll and Benden for the duration of the emergency, which they accept. Ted accuses the vote of being rigged and is sure neither Boll nor Benden will step down. 

_[Tubberman's been set up to be a patsy and a fall guy, someone that the colonists can rally around their leadership in opposition to. While he's enthusiastic in his points, and on the extreme of what he things are appropriate actions, Tubberman isn't wrong. But because his solutions are things that will take time and also go against the idea of sticking it out in adversity, he's going to be shouted down and then eventually exiled out. It's a really good bit of manipulation, as one might expect when it was one of the mental health professionals suggesting something needed doing.]_

Even though he's lost his credibility with the colonists (and, presumably, the reader) at this point, I'd give good odds that Ted is basically correct on both accusations. A trained orator is making the case for recentralization, while the most prominent voice of the opposition is a grief-stricken man with a clear need for vengeance. And since nobody knows exactly how long Thread will be around, Benden and Boll have basically become dictators-for-life. The Randian paradise is over, thanks to a worldwide threat that can't be handled by everyone acting in their own self-interest. Even without Thread as the catalyst, power was eventually going to concentrate on the hands of those who did best and had excesses, so this would have been the eventual result, anyway. It's just been sped up significantly.

After the election, Cabot mentions that Thread is likely to fall tomorrow, and Benden and Kenjo explain the need for the aerial fighting team. Those with dragonets are encouraged to join the ground crews that will find and exterminate any Thread that falls through. The meeting ends in a spontaneous cheer from most of the people there, but this segment ends on a very creepy vibe, not out of place in a suspense novel or a thriller.

"Perhaps only Ongola took note of those who remained seated or silent."

Ongola, the one person who has been consistently paying attention to these things, as perhaps the spymaster of the colony and its newly re-formed government. What, exactly, does Ongola know anymore?


	9. Misfit Mobilization Moment

Last section, Thread continued to fall, the glaring holes in the EEC report (and the narrative) became more apparent, and the colonists decided they needed a central government again to keep them safe from Thread.

**Dragonsdawn, Part Two: Content Notes: Feminine stereotypes**

So, this chapter starts with the Reality Ensues part of what happens when you try to get an untrained non-military force up to spec with things they are untrained with.

> "Practice" was not the appropriate term for the chaos that resulted. Kenjo was reduced to snarling preemptory orders over the comm unit as the inept but eager young pilots plummeted through the skies after Thread, frequently favoring one another with a glancing touch of HNO3.  
>  Fighting Thread required entirely different techniques from hunting wherry or scoring a hit on a large flying machine driven by a reasonably intelligent enemy.  
>  [...]  
>  Nine domesticated dragonets fell victim to such inexpertise, and there was suddenly a marked decrease in the number of wild ones who joined the fray.  
>  In the first hour of the Fall, seven sleds were involved in midair collisions, three badly damaged and two with cracked siliplex canopies which made them unairworthy. Even Kenjo's sled bore scorch marks. Four broken arms, six broken or sprained hands, three cracked collarbones, and a broken leg put fourteen gunners out of action; many others struggled on with lacerations and bruises. No one had thought about rigging any safety harnesses for the flame-gunners.

Not everyone knows how to handle the sleds and the guns. And, apparently, nobody thought about what might happen to stop people from hitting each other or needed to accelerate and change direction in a hurry. This seems like a lack of basic thinking about the problem, or, possibly, the experts being unable to understand the beginner's mind.

_[Even more aggravating is that there are several military people on board the colony ship. Unless the unnamed personnel have all been Thread-eaten, there are probably enough people who do know how to fly things that could be used to create a fighting wing for the immediate problem, and then others who could train others as their reserves and pilots. Kind of like the system that will be used for the dragons later on, once they're of proper size for the matter. This reads more like conscription of people into roles they're not suited for, rather than soliciting volunteers and getting them slotted into the things they have aptitude for. From a place supposedly led by an admiral. I can understand disorganization, but chaos like this, I wouldn't expect to happen.]_

Having seen that they need more structure to their efforts, the squad leaders decide to keep each of their squads within a narrow band of altitude to avoid accidental flaming of each other and send them to sweep back and forth across the Thread, tactics that will still be basically in use by their descendants nearly two thousand years later, without improvements or changes. It does work at keeping the accidents down, however, and the tactical improvements shift to figuring out just what's needed for ground crews, resupply, logistics, and medics. And another reminder that dragonets do know what they are doing, as Benden observes Sean and Sorka directing their fair to efficient ground work.

Much of the ground crew stays on for the night at their fighting line, with Sean and Sorka tending fire-dragonets by "slathering numb-weed on Threadscored wings and seared hide." It's only been a few days since Threadfall started, but all the vocabulary put into use by the descendants has already appeared, as well as the discovery of the numbweed plant (which may have been discovered in the eight years since Landing started) and its use. The narrative and the author, it seems, don't want to go to the work of showing how these things arrived, and are just stashing them into the timeline wherever possible when the camera isn't looking.

After tending to the dragonets, Sorka asks Sean for a massage of her shoulder, which also becomes a massage of her neck, and the two steal off for some sexytimes. (I think this is the first official confirmation of the two as a couple.) The narrative shifts away from them and to the conference of leaders, who understand their current solution is not going to work on the long term, as it relies on recharging the power packs for the sleds. Boll remarks that the dragonets are the best defense, but they're too small, which sparks an idea from a lot of the other assembled leaders. We don't get to see them explain it, though, because the narrative decides things are more important elsewhere.

More specifically, now is apparently the time to mention that Avril and company are still alive and gathering all sorts of gemstones to themselves. This morning is finding a beach with black diamonds for the taking. Avril collects everything she can, and apparently, Stev is unsurprised to find that the day after this discovery, Avril has disappeared, with a sled and the most precious gemstones collected.

> Stev grinned maliciously. She might have ignored the mayday from Landing, but he had not. He had followed what was happening on the southern continent, and kept an eye to the east whenever a cloud appeared. He had made contingency plans. He had doubted Avril had. He would have liked to see her expression when she found out that Landing was swarming with industrious people, the takeoff grid crammed with sleds and technicians. So he roared with amusement when one of the apprentices anxiously reported that she could not find Avril anywhere.  
>  Nabhi Nabol was not at all pleased.

_[Have a cocowhat. They're plentiful.]_

So, we are supposed to believe that Avril has not kept up with any news from Landing, despite having materials that came from there and would probably need to feed power from there. And despite a started desire to rule the planet as a substitute for not getting to rule by Benden's side. And because she would need the craft that is stored at Landing to get out into orbit with her cargo. But in eight years, we're supposed to believe that she has blithely assumed everyone would spread out and leave the craft there for the taking, and that the colony itself would succeed exactly according to its own timetable so that they're wouldn't be any people there that she couldn't sneak in and steal the craft. Or some similarly improbable sequence of events. We're supposed to believe that Avril hasn't had enough interest in Landing to not know about Threadfall and all that has transpired, but Stev does. If the narrative explicitly mentioned that Stev had been hiding this information from Avril and redirecting her curiosity into greed and lust... it would still be unbelievable, but it would at least have a patina of a justification to it. Here, the narrative wants us to believe Avril is stupid, despite having portrayed her as a skilled manipulator of people earlier in the book, and giving her at least some credit to those skills. I can't really believe that Avril would decide now is a good time to try and get away from Pern. It doesn't work, and is the waste of a perfectly good scheme. There needs to be more explanation as to why Avril chooses this completely inopportune moment to go back.

_[There's a definite strain of women villains being cartoonishly evil wherever possible. Many of the men villains do the same, mind, but they at least get the narrative courtesy of being outmaneuvered by the protagonists, rather than choosing to make decisions that are nonsensical because the narrative said it was time for them to forsake their intelligence. Thella is the closest we'll get to a competent villain, and even then, she falls down flat in a lot of ways.]_

The narrative changes to Kenjo, getting up into space on a mission to analyze Thread to see if the predictive programs are accurate, trace the source of the Thread and then destroy it before it enters the atmosphere. Kenjo is pretty pleased with how much fuel he's hoarded and how he's using it to fly a different kind of aircraft over the skies of Pern, aided by his wife, who appears to be a stereotype of some sort.

> His wife, patient and calm, had ventured no opinion on his avocation, aiding him in its construction. A mechanical engineer, she managed the small hydroelectric plant that served their plateau home and three small stakes in the next valley. She had given him four children, three of them sons, was a good mother, and even managed to help him cultivate the fruit trees that he had raised as a credit crop.

She's a saint, and apparently does all the necessary work for keeping them alive while Kenjo goes gallivanting off in the skies. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see toxic masculinity as Kenjo's operating procedure in family relationships. There doesn't seem to be any reason for her to keep Kenjo if she doesn't want to. And the way that Kenjo is portrayed here, he wants to be back out in space, instead of in the ground, so maybe she will have the opportunity sooner rather than later.

_[She'll also be terribly treated by the narrative by the time of Rescue Run. But we're not there yet. Here, instead, we get a stereotype of a Japanese wife, who is supportive, smart, raises the children, and (most importantly for the narrative) silent. For a book that has talked on page about "unacceptable ethnic stereotypes," the narrative certainly seems very interested in trucking in them as much as it can.]_

The narrative switches back to Avril's return to Landing, where she is livid and confused as to why there are so many people and the ship she was planning on using is gone (Kenjo's got it right now). With nothing else to do, Avril disguises herself as a mechanic and sets off to poke around. Sallah spots her immediately, based on height, build, and gait, but dismisses the suspicion because the woman then stops to work on some equipment. After that, Sallah returns her attention to Drake, who is teaching volunteers how to fight off Thread. Here we hear the first contraction into "agenothree", because we've gone too long without a call forward, but Sallah can't keep her attention on the briefing, instead drifting in thought to her children and her husband. And the trouble she is having getting him to be lusty with her - to the point where she's taken up trying to sex him up right when he wakes up, before he goes about on his day. At the end of the meeting, Sallah goes off to reminisce with a friend, with a casual remark asking about where Sorka is before the narrative shifts over to Sean, aggravated that Benden is asking for a cavalry unit with flamethrowers, and Sorka, who is trying to calm him down. As she watches Sean fume, Sorka notes to herself that his anger is actually a sign of how comfortable he is with her, and that he's normally a very agreeable, sociable person, unless someone presses his Berserk Button about animals and/or dragonets. There's a side effect of Sean's anger - all their dragonets are out of the house, so once he's calmed a bit, Sean decides it's a good time for nookie.

_[As is pointed out in the comments, the solution to men forcing women is not to have women forcing men instead. Whatever is going on in between Sallah and Tarvi, they need to talk about it. They needed to talk about it before she started on him, but since she's clearly not getting what she wants, they need to have a talk about it. And perhaps she would learn what she needed to know so that she could have a satisfying sex life, which might involve being partnered to someone other than Tarvi._

_Plus, Sean is not endearing himself to the commenters here (or me). Someone who is only unguarded about his anger around his partner is not someone to be admired, he's someone to be suspected of abusing his partner. If it were grousing, that's one thing, but the narrative suggests this is more than being annoyed at others in these situations. That Sorka sees it as a sign of intimacy is not good, but since she's a Protagonist, we're supposed to believe it is.]_

> But even when they were not in season, the creatures delighted in strong emotions, and with thirteen in a chorus of encouragement, the entire neighborhood would know what was happening in the Hanrahan-Connell quartets.

That has to be awkward. There's no getting around dragonet gossip, so everybody knows when someone is knocking boots with someone else. I wonder if that makes the gossip more or less juicy when the fire lizards are involved.

After sex, Sorka frets that she hasn't been formally married to Sean - her parents are on board, but his parents clearly have a different woman picked out for their son, someone in the Traveler community. Sorka also realizes that she really wants to have a baby with Sean, just in case something Thread happens to him, and now she understands they have enough credit to have their own stake together when they get paired.

_[I don't know how insulated the group wants too be, or whether they're going to have concerns about continuing their own family lines, but depending on how devastated the Traveler community is from Thread, having some outsiders come in might seem to be a more attractive thing. Unless it's because the Irish and the Travelers still have a long-standing beef against each other (which seems to be true, from the way things were described) such that even if it would be good to have new folks in the community, they absolutely can't be the Irish, because it's inviting one's sworn enemy in. But if this was supposed to be a Romeo and Juliet plot, I would have expected the narrative to signpost it better._

_Also, it's nice that we're seeing that money never really disappeared, it's just changed names into "credit," presumably managed by Lilienkamp with regard to how much people are taking out and putting back into the stores. It's not surprising that money never disappeared—after all, this is Rand's paradise, not Marx's.]_

The narrative shifts to Kitti Ping, her daughter, and the assembled high administrators of Landing, having a private meeting in Ping's house. The chairs are arranged so that the short Ping is sitting tallest of all of the assembled, which Benden notices, before complaining in his mind about the discomfort of the stools. Everyone assembled has come to the same conclusion - Total Party Kill, unless Kitti and her daughter can use genetic engineering techniques to make the dragonets into dragons, with size, loyalty, and flaming ability to match. Kitti agrees, shocking everyone, but doesn't guarantee any sort of success at the matter. And that ends the chapter.

Not exactly a cliffhanger, and the narrative runs into the problem of having to have things play out this way, or else it destroys its own timeline. The narrative has done a good job so far of keeping Thread menacing to the colonists, but it's not always doing such a good job of holding the excitement of the reader.


	10. The Impossible Plot Unveiled

Last time, a villain was once again forced into incompetence by the narrative, the colonists continued to fight Thread, and finally decided on the last-ditch option - asking the geneticist to build dragons. To everyone's surprise, she agreed.

**Dragonsdawn, Part Two: Content Notes: Murder, torture**

Now that permission has been obtained, basically everyone with any knowledge of animals is put to work helping Kitti Ping. Everyone else is basically conscripted into fighting Thread or researching it. When Fall is going to drop over Stev Kimmer and Avril Bitra's stake, the administration orders an evacuation, and Stev comes back laden with metals and minerals and mentions that Avril came back weeks ago, putting the administration on alert for her. Avril herself has left Landing and settled into a nearby stake to wait everyone out and see if she can steal the spacecraft, the narrative shows.

The narrative shifts to an impatient Benden and Boll being consoled to patience by Kitti Ping, who reminds them that they cannot rush gestation unless they like having their work go for nothing. Being dismissed sparks an idea in Benden to hold a day of rest and festivities so as to keep up morale. At the event itself, before the festivities get started in earnest, Ongola casually mentions that it would be a good idea to gather more often, and we have a slightly more subtle call forward to the Gather festivals.

However, we get nothing of the festivities, only the fatality reports from the Fall that happened at the same time due to crashes brought on by pilots horsing around, and Ongola having sought a hangover cure before work. And then someone comes in to see him because they found where Kenjo was hoarding space fuel. Ongola swiftly reassures her that the fuel is from the colonists, and not any aliens, and then tells her she found nothing and nobody gets to know. Tarvi arrives and suggests stripping the shuttles so as to repair and rebuild air sleds lost to collision and damage.

Soon after, Kitti Ping dies, having completed the program needed to generate dragons from dragonets. And Ezra reports to Benden and Boll that two probes have attempted to scan and collect data on the wandering planet. Both failed and were destroyed at the same place.

Oh, and that the Thread thing could last up to fifty years, if his program calculations are correct. This segment seems to be all about trying to be a tragedy from start to finish, the part in the narrative moving toward the lowest point in the story, as if the arrival of Thread hasn't been a good enough low point. The deaths and bad news are all piling up at once, now that the plot flag of dragon eggs has been achieved. Now that we can be reasonably sure the colony will survive, individuals can now be killed off, it appears.

Plot-wise, Ezra suggests sending someone up to the colony ships to fix the remaining probes and send them to the red planet and the tail the planet is leaving behind. Kenjo will pilot, and both Bitra and Kimmer are passed on before Ongola is selected as the second for the mission.

So, since everyone is on high alert and ready to go, now is the time Avril decides she's going to steal the ship and get away, worried that they're isn't going to be enough fuel left for her if she waits any longer. As soon as she decides to go, the perspective switches to Sallah, who recognizes Avril again by her gait, and this time is not dissuaded by appearances. Picking up a big wrench, she hustles after Avril, but isn't able to stop Avril hitting Kenjo and Ongola hard enough to have blood coming out of their heads. Sallah throws herself inside the airlock just before Avril takes the ship up and then passes out. Children discover the two men soon after - Kenjo dead, Ongola severely hurt - after Ezra reports that the shuttle docked successfully with the carrier in space. This is finally enough to shock Benden into a need for a drink and a sit-down. He decides on asking whether or not Kenjo's wife knows where the rest of the fuel is before trying to figure out who just committed murder and stole the ship.

> "Then ask Jake if there are any unmodified sleds on the grid. Find out exactly where Stev Kimmer, Nabol Nahbi, and Bart Lemos are. And-" Paul held up a warning hand. "-if anyone's seen Avril Bitra anywhere."  
>  "Avril?" Ezra echoed, and then clamped his mouth firmly shut.  
>  Suddenly Paul swore in a torrent of abusive language that made even Ezra regard him with amazement, and slammed out of the room.

And now, it turns out, we have a very mad Admiral, but luckily, the guidance chip dummies that Ongola had been swapping in and out are still in place on the shuttle ship, so Avril has no way of getting away. Benden thinks there's something that could have been done to stop Avril, but given the characterization that she's had, there's nothing short of letting her go that would have worked to stop Avril. After the self-flagellation from Benden, Boll notes that Sallah is unaccounted for as well.

> "Unfortunately," Emily said, "she had a hostage, whether she knows it or not. Sallah Telgar-Andiyar is also missing."

Before we follow the narrative over to Avril and Sallah, I have to say that this plotline feels misplaced, as if it were should be put somewhere else, but an editorial decision decided that it would be better to have all the danger all at once.

Avril, as characterized here, is a mid-boss at best. She wants to fill up a craft with gemstones and fly back from where she came to live out a life of luxury. Good gemstones aren't particularly hard to find or mine, apparently, so there's no real reason why Avril would wait eight years before deciding to leave. If she needs Landing depopulated enough to steal the ship, then smarter villainy suggests that she would be trying very hard to get everyone else established in their stakes so that they go away and leave her to taking the craft. She would not be ignoring Landing so much as to miss the whole Thread thing - she'd be hip deep in it, looking for opportune times to steal the spacecraft. It feels like a plot that should be happening in the first year or two of the colony, a small test of the leadership to see if they can stop her from stealing and/or trying to get herself elected leader so that she can just take the shuttle herself. The whole Avril arc should have been concluded by now, so that when the world-threatening menace appears, it can be a proper threat. Depending on how things resolved with Avril attempting a democratic takeover, maybe Avril does this sequence as an opportunistic attempt, but this sequence should be in the context where Avril's already been defeated a few times and is popping up again.

Not to mention that the narrative itself seems to have been struggling at this point. It started with three groups - the administrative team for when logistics was needed, Sean and Sorka for exploration, and Avril for the voice of the discontent, which is usually used to poke holes in the utopic visions of the others. Avril's disappearance and Tubberman's mental break took the teeth out of that voice, and once things started to settle, Sean and Sorka stopped appearing, too. Now Avril's back, for no apparent reason, and the narrative is struggling to put her back into the Thread plot.

Finally, Holds and Weyrs are named after people, presumably, that the colonists look up to and respect. Given their characterization do far, why do Bitra and Nabol Holds exist at all?

The plot gives us this sequence to open the confrontation between Telgar and Bitra:

> Sallah returned to consciousness aware of severe discomfort and a throbbing pain in her left foot. She was bound tightly and efficiently in an uncomfortable position, her hands behind her back and secured to her tied feet. She was floating with her side just brushing the floor of the spacecraft; the lack of gravity told her she was no longer on Pern. There was a rhythmic but unpleasant background noise, along with the sounds of things clattering and slipping about.  
>  Then she recognized the monotonous and vicious sounds to be the curses of Avril Bitra.

No, sorry, that doesn't work. Cursing, by nature, is not monotonous, and if it were, it could not be vicious as well. Sallah might think Avril's choices in curses uninspired or ineffective, but they certainly aren't going to be delivered in a monotone.

_[It was suggested in the comments that monotonal cursing is a doable thing, but when I see "monotone", I tend to think Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, so I'm probably not calibrated correctly. And also, I expect some changes of inflection and delivery, even if the pitch doesn't vary, so that makes it less monotonal to me as well.]_

Avril kicks Sallah and threatens to space her for what Avril believes Sallah did to the ship. Sallah plays for time to start, and as Avril realizes that the ship can't do anything, accompanied by a "...tirade of malevolent and resentful oaths spun from Avril's lips" (See? Much better phrasing.), Avril decides she needs Sallah alive, but not before Avril spins her around in the microgravity until Sallah vomits.

> "You bitch woman!" Avril stopped Sallah before she could expel more vomit into the air. "Okay! If that's the way of it, you know what I need to know. And you're going to tell me, or I'll kill you by inches." A spaceman's knife, with its many handlepacked implements, sliced across the top of Sallah's nose.  
>  Then she felt the blade none too gently cutting the bindings on her hands and feet. Blood rushed through starved arteries, and her strained muscles reacted painfully. If she had not been in free-fall, she would have collapsed.

I'm not sure what happened here. Did Avril actually cut Sallah on her nose, which would cause blood to leak out into microgravity and create a bigger potential mess? Especially since head wounds tend to bleed worse than other ones? Or is this just the bad use of a word here?

I also don't quite understand why Avril is getting upset at Sallah vomiting after Avril spun her around so quickly. Maybe it was fun until reality ensued? Or Avril, who just cut Sallah, got squicked by vomit?

In any case, Avril drags Sallah to the pilot's seat, tethers her to it, and orders her to put a course in to the nearest system over. Sallah figures that even if the fuel tanks run out, Avril will be able to drift for centuries in deep sleep, eventually be rescued by someone picking up on a distress beacon, and sell off all the gems and metals at a very tidy profit. Everyone knew, apparently, what Avril's plan was, but nobody appeared to care or think that Avril would try to pull it off. Except perhaps Ongola. Probably because they didn't think it very likely or possible that someone would be able to pull off the sequence.

When the computer returns an error, Avril turns her rage back on Sallah.

> Avril pressed Sallah's foot against the base of the console module, increasing the pain to the point where Sallah felt herself losing consciousness. Avril viciously pinched her left breast. "You don't pass out on me, Telgar!"  
>  [...Sallah directs Avril to open a panel and see what's gone...]  
>  "How did they do it? What did they take, Telgar, or I'll start carving you up." Avril flattened Sallah's left hand over the exposed chips, and her knife blade cut through the little finger to the bone. Pain and shock lanced through Sallah's body. "You don't need this one at all!"  
>  "Blood hangs in the air just like vomit and urine, Bitra. And if you don't stop, you'll have both in free-fall."  
>  They locked eyes in a contest of wills.  
>  "What...did...they...remove?" With each word Avril sawed against the little finger. Sallah screamed. It felt good to scream, and she knew it would complete the picture of her in Avril's mind: soft. Sallah had never felt harder in her life.

So, I'm guessing that the earlier knife attack was an actual wound given there, too. Sallah should be bleeding particularly well at this point, with as much damage as Avril has been doing to her in her rage. This should be a matter of contamination risk a lot earlier than when it is mentioned, but I think we're supposed to see Avril as letting out her true self, instead of the charmer and manipulator that she's been cultivating this entire time (and that everyone has already apparently seen through), and so is no longer concerned with such things as whether or not the spacecraft she intends to fly out will actually be safe enough to get to her destination.

As things are, the narrative goes back to the planet, as the assembled administrators, Ezra, and Tarvi watch Avril take Sallah onto the Yokohama to find replacement parts for the missing guidance chips. Apparently, the chips and crystals are the wrong size, but things will apparently work well enough to get the tiny ship out and on its way before the real sabotage, already done by Ongola, is made clear - the ship, once pointed in a direction, will only travel on that line, instead of any particular course laid in.

After Sallah watches Avril and the small ship disappear, having been left behind by Avril, she opens communications to the planet and tells Ezra that he has three probes to fire. The people on the ground are not amused by this and want to talk about how to get her back down to the planet. She dispatches the probes according to the directions Ezra gives her, rigs the data transfer to be forwarded on to the planet, and then points out to the assembled on the ground that she doesn't have enough oxygen in her tanks to get rescued, not mentioning the part where she's also bleeding out from the wounds that Avril gave her. Tarvi gives an impassioned plea of his love for her and how stupid he was not to have said it and shown it more. Sallah hears it and responds to it before she dies.

As for Avril, it turns out that the vector that she chose, and expects the craft to follow, will take her into a crash with the Red Star. The only useful thing that comes out of that encounter, other than constant curses, is a fragmentary "It's not the--" that is, naturally, left unexplained before the craft crashes and Avril is also no more.

All that's left for this section is to give the news officially to Kenjo's wife, learn about the existence of the other fuel cave, even if they don't know where it is exactly, and then to have the bonfire lighting. Tarvi has the "honor" of the action, and here we see the first inklings of the custom that will result in the naming of the Holds and Weyrs.

> "From now on," he shouted hoarsely, "I am not Tarvi, nor Andiyar. I am Telgar, so that her name is spoken every day, so that her name is remembered by everyone for giving **us** her life today. Our children will now bear that name, too. Ram Telgar, Ben Telgar, Dana Telgar, and Cara Telgar, who will never know her mother." He took a deep breath, filling his chest. **"What is my name?"**  
>  "Telgar!" Paul replied as loud as he could.  
>  "Telgar!" cried Emily beside him, Pierre's baritone repeating it a breath behind her. **"Telgar!"**  
>  "Telgar! Telgar! Telgar! **Telgar! Telgar!** " Nearly three thousand voices took up the shout in a chant, pumping their arms until Telgar thrust the burning torch into the bonfire. As the flame roared up through the dry wood and fern, the name crescendoed. **"Telgar! Telgar! Telgar!"**

The tragedy compounds. In a narrative where this was further up in the story, this would be a good lead into the arrival of something more dangerous and deadly - the story of sacrifices made before the world-ending rain arrived. Instead, the truth of Thread means that mourning and resolution is likely to be put on hold because survival is about to become foremost in everyone's mind again. A big narrative beat is stolen away by not being in the right place.

Furthermore, it's only after the tragedy that we find out that Tarvi really loves his wife (and has had multiple children with her! Those dawn attacks were apparently super-effective.) and is now regretting not showing it. It's an action without any sort of precedent at all in Tarvi's character. Admittedly, being grief-stricken will do shame things to you, but it would have been nicer to have had precedent, like a little more about how even though he basically acts/is ace, Tarvi has flashes of affection or desire for Sallah. People can be complex, and that's okay.

_[It's entirely possible that Tarvi is grey-ace, or ace but not aro, or many other possibilities that the people of 21st c. Terra have adapted and invented terminology for that this particular author wouldn't necessarily have had access to or wide cultural awareness in their favor. All the same, it's a fascinating opportunity for exploration that mostly goes by the wayside in Tarvi Telgar taking his wife's name in her memory, to be played out over the ages. Also, Sallah Telgar definitely informs her successors by jumping into something without thinking about it that much and causing needless loss of life because of it. That particular consistency is pretty solid throughout both books and authors.]_


	11. Hope In An Eggshell

Last time, Avril decided she had to make a break for it with her gems, after having spent far too long not doing anything about it. She killed the pilot and severely hurt the spymaster, then tortured the woman that followed her on and left her to die, only to find out that she had been anticipated and that her plot would go all for nothing, with the ship crashing and killing her at the end if it all.

Landing mourned the dead, and Sallah's husband took her name as a memorial to her.

**Dragonsdawn, Part Two: Content Notes: Gender essentialism**

So, before we start, I'm still a bit leery about how Avril was all passion and anger at the end, there, because she was also previously described as being a very ethnic woman and all sexual passion and manipulation. That didn't change her characterization away from the idea of the emotional black woman at all, but instead just changed her emotional passion from sex and manipulation to rage. It's not a good mark on the narrative at all that it gave Avril almost no dimension, even as it used her as an antagonist.

I still think this entire sequence should have been earlier in the book, and especially now, with the plot of "disgruntled colonists" continuing after Avril's death. Ted Tubberman, Bart Lemos, and Stev Kimmer are poking themselves in places where they're not welcome, taking and requisitioning things that are not in their usual specialties, and spreading rumors meant to undermine the leadership, like "Avril and Kenjo were going for help and Ongola killed them to stop it." Most of the people in charge of labs and supplies ask Benden and Boll for permission to exclude them from those areas, or have already banned them from coming. Benden wants to know what the plan is, if possible, but isn't willing to go so far as to restrict Ted, Bart, or Stev to their stakes, claiming he doesn't have the authority to do that.

Yet the administration seems surprised when Tubberman and accomplices put together a distress beacon and launch it into space. Benden and Boll haul Ted into custody and then want to know who gave him help in assembling and launching the thing. Ted is unhelpful, believing himself in the right for doing it, but the administration suspects Kimmer, Nabol, and Lemos assisted.

_[That distress beacon is the reason for Rescue Run, because someone does find it and comes looking to see what's happened. But because almost all the colonists have moved north by the time they get there, the rescue itself doesn't save that many people. And those that are rescued have been subjected to a significant amount of trauma and torture at the hands of Stev Kimmer. But that's still in the future.]_

When figuring out a suitable punishment for Ted, Boll suggests shunning, which is permissible under the charter's rules that forbid corporal punishment and is an effective excuse for everyone to ignore Ted. Benden likes it and has it promulgated. We spend a scene in the labs, where Wind Blossom points out that the beacon launch might actually be good, because now nobody can claim that all options weren't exercised. A small tremor has everyone in the lab exceedingly unhappy, even though the shock absorbers that are protecting the artificial dragon wombs do absorb the shock. A quick shift to Benden and Boll receiving a visit from Jim Tillek, telling them that the dolphins have reported an active volcano close enough by to bring ash to Landing on the wind, checking up on the rumor mill, and offering to take a look at the readings from the probes Sallah sent before dying. Benden and Boll take him up on the offer, and Tillek goes off to see Keroon. Who is hip-deep in complete confusion - all the probes and the spacecraft Avril was on were destroyed before impact on the surface of the Red Star. So there's something up there that's hostile to the probes and spacecraft, if only they could figure it out. And Stev Kimmer is gone, of course, with supplies enough to stay gone for a long while, stolen from Landing, poking about, possibly looking for Kenjo's second secret stash. Of course, none of the shuttles would work to get away, anyway.

The administration decides that they could send someone up in a shuttle to examine the trail of the wanderer and see if that's where the danger is, or whether it's the planet. They convince Nabol to do it by promising to make him a charterer and to give him Avril's old stake. He demands Lemos also get charterer status and be his copilot, which also happens. This would be the biggest piece of news on Landing, except that twenty-seven eggs have just been moved to their Hatching Ground in the lab, with Sean and Sorka as the seniormost apprentices on the project. Sorka's pregnant with Sean's child, but she hasn't told him yet. And then he finds out just by looking at her, and says that while he's thrilled, he wasn't sure this was the right time for it. And that they're going before the magistrate to swear out their marriage as soon as possible.

The next Threadfall is off of predictions, which causes a mad scramble and a reinforcement of orders that nobody gets to help Ted Tubberman defend his stake. In the aftermath, though, Ned Tubberman, Ted's son, comes up to point out that Ted has found a way of protecting his stake without the need for fire. And the flying captain of the day confirms that there was a patch of grass unharmed despite the Thread.

This should be momentous news and a giant scientific discovery for Landing, but...

> There was a long silence, which Emily finally broke. "Ned, we do not doubt **you** , or Drake's verification, but as your father said, shunning works both ways."  
>  "Are you too proud to ask him what he's done?" Ned demanded, his skin blanched under his tan, and his nostrils flaring with indignation.  
>  "Pride is not involved," Emily said gently. "Safety is. He was shunned because he defied the will of the colony. If you can honestly say that he has changed his attitude, then we can discuss reinstatement."  
>  Ned flushed, his eyes dropping away from Emily's tolerant gaze. He sighed deeply. "He doesn't want anything to do with Landing or anyone on it." Then he gripped the edge of the table and leaned across it toward the governor. "But he's done something incredible. Drake saw it."

He did, indeed, and everyone is interested in trying to get that information without breaking the shunning, hoping to work on the one confidant Ted has, who claims he is sworn to secrecy.

_[Oh, how swiftly the Randian experiment has fallen apart. "The will of the colony," indeed, rather than everyone for themselves. Additionally, despite his characterization as "one of the dissenting voices in the colony," Ted is apparently an excellent geneticist and biologist, to the point where he has adapted one of the native insect life forms to be able to both eat Thread and heal any plants that may have been damaged by it in the Fall. Regardless of what plants they are. That he's also developed very large cats that he thought would make good bodyguards of his space says that not every idea is a good one, but he succeeded at this one, as well. It would be a much different story indeed if the knowledge of the grubs and their importance had been preserved (since, y'know, they're vital to the survival of things on Pern) instead of getting lost and fragmented so that it can be rediscovered some time later and then implemented as it was intended to be. But if it had, then the dragons might not have ascended to their supreme position, and we can't have that, can we?]_

The day of the shuttle launch, which goes successfully, the eggs are ready to hatch. The signal is the convergence of dragonets on the lab where the Hatching Ground is. The candidates are already arranged and ready for the very first hatching of Pern.

> The young people in the circle stood their ground, and Emily marveled at their courage, for that awkward creature was not the graceful being she had been expecting, a beast remembered from old legends and illustrations held in library treasures. She caught herself holding her breath, and exhaled quickly.  
>  The creature extended its wings; they were wider and thinner than she had expected. It was so spindly, so ungainly, and its very oddly constructed eyes were flashing with red and yellow. Emily felt a flush of alarm. The creature gave a desperate cry, and was answered reassuringly by the multivoiced choir above. It lurched forward, its voice pleading, and then the cry alerts to one of joy, held on a high sweet note. It staggered another step and then fell at the feet of David Catarel, who bent to help it.  
>  He looked up with eyes wide with wonder. "He wants me!"  
>  "Then accept him!" Pol bellowed, gesturing for one of the stewards to come forward with a bowl of food. "Feed him! No, don't anyone else help you. The bond should be made now!"

And there we have it. The bronze's name is Polenth.

Several other eggs hatch and Impress upon their possible candidates, and all the observers cluster around Wind Blossom and Pol to talk about what happens next, after Pol is informed that the shuttle launch was successful, but it will take a week of drifting in space before it arrives at the right place for measurements. Then we find out something about the way that the dragons have been engineered.

> "Do they always go female to female?" Emily asked Pol. "And male to male?"  
>  "Since the males are expected to be fighters and the females egg-carriers, Kitti made it logical."  
>  "Logical to her," Emily said, a trifle bemused. "There aren't any blues or greens among them," she suddenly realized.  
>  "Kitti programmed the heavier males, but I believe they're to carry sperm for the entire range. The greens will be the smallest, the fighters; the blues sturdier, with more staying power; the browns sort of anchor fighters with even more endurance. They'll have to fight four to six hours, remember! The bronzes are leaders and the golds..."  
>  "Waiting at home to be egg carriers."  
>  Pol gave Emily a long look, his tired face reflecting astonishment at her sarcasm.  
>  "In the wild, greens don't have good maternal instincts. The golds do," Bay put in, giving the governor an odd glance. "Kitti Ping kept as much natural instinct as possible. Or so her program reads."

_[That's one cocowhat's worth of pure bullshit.]_

There's a rather large problem here - because _green dragons are females_. The front-line fighters, according to the program Kitti Ping put in, are going to be women. Women who apparently have poor maternal instincts, and can therefore be sacrificed to the ravenous Thread. Women with good maternal instincts will get the gold dragons, instead. And only men get to be leaders, because bronzes Impress to men only.

This is supposedly the logical order to Kitti Ping, and I love that Governor Emily Boll is throwing as much shade on this as she can, since nobody else seems to have thought all that much about it. Or the part where someone could very easily be depleting necessary genetic diversity for the colony by sending out women to fight and die.

Unless there's a retcon afoot, and green dragons have now always been males, despite Path having already been written. At which point, the glaring gender essentialism still shines through brightly - men as fighters, women as nurturers. This is only logical to a society that has ingrained these ideas into its fabric. The Pern colony does not appear to have those ideas that tightly wound, considering the sheer number of women in important positions we have seen.

In any case, Kitti Ping has condemned Pern's dragonriders to sexism all the days of their lives. It casts aspersions on Mirrim and Path, that the tomboy nature of Mirrim makes her an unfit parent.

Women can't fucking win on this planet, can they?

_[This also foreshadows the part where there won't be a whole lot of women riding dragons at all in short order, and therefore Kitti Ping's program of four colors of fighters, all going to the "expendable" gender, and one color of stay-at-home mom, ends up seeing its complete fulfillment, but it's still quite the prejudice ingrained that any woman who Impresses green wouldn't have been a great mother anyway, so she's just as expendable as the men are. Given the importance of babies, and the presence of a lot of Babies Ever After endings to books and stories, I suppose this shouldn't be surprising, but still. the dragons themselves are set up the way they are because someone had very gender-essentialist ideas about the way things should be, despite being trained by aliens as a geneticist. Perhaps after training her, the Eridani realized they made a mistake and generalzed to the point where they refused to train anyone else (or not nearly as in-depth as they did Kitti Ping.)]_

After a short interlude in space, where Nabol gloats about his fuel efficiency so that he can position the shuttle to collect whatever gems and metals that survived the destruction of Avril's craft (call forward to Meron's greed, to show how well-suited he is, and to show that the jumped-up steward is also following in Nabol's lead about ascending to the position from humble beginnings), we see everyone keeping watch, with Sean nudging Sorka awake from a nap, right before more of the eggs hatch. Sean Impresses a bronze, Carenath, and Sorka Impresses a gold, Faranth, after someone has to tell her to look, since she's been passing bowls of food to Sean since he Impressed. Thus, Sean and Sorka continue on their narrative, from exploration to dragonets to dragonriders.

The next scene is the debriefing, enter everyone but Wind Blossom ready to congratulate themselves on a job well done regarding the dragons, and everyone anxious to see whether or not the dragons will breathe fire and teleport (already referred to as going between at this point). Wind Blossom is unsure as to whether the hatchlings will be able to survive, flame, teleport, _and reproduce_ , so she's going to take what was learned from the dragon eggs that didn't survive and stay a new program for another generation of eggs. She's basically right, as a scientific principle goes - don't assume, and when your antagonist is life-devouring, always have a backup plan or five.

_[This is basically the entire genesis for what we will see and hear about Wind Blossom in the Todd books, but unlike everything thta's to follow that will paint her as a failure and unable to live up to the legacy of her mother, it will instead remake Wind Blossom to be fully knowledgeable about what she was doing and to have successfully developed an alternate species and an alternative pathway that dragons might have come into existence over. Which might have some interesting parallels to the son author writing in the mother author's world and trying to make it his own while keeping it recognizably the same place. (Less awesomely, many of the changes seem to be the kind that make things worse, rather than better.)]_

Beyond that, we get a scene of the care and bathing of dragons, with oiling and itching and Carenath splashing Faranth with a sweep of his wings. Useful information about dragons learned: Their bones are made of boron and silicon, instead of calcium. And their fingerlike appendages are an improvement to the dragonets pincer claws. They also generally can bring the shy, fearful, and taciturn out and make them more outgoing, happy, and affectionate. Sean and Sorka settle into the practicalities of dragon-raising - what's going to happen when they grow up, where will they be housed, are they going to have to get rid of the horses (yes), is this going to affect Sorka's pregnancy (shrug), and so forth. 

Here's a good place to stop. Because you know a disaster has to follow something good, or it wouldn't be Pern.


	12. The Final Nail

Last time, dragons hatched and Impressed, and everyone got a little bit better idea about what it was going to take to raise them, a shuttle went up to examine what's up with the wandering planet, and a man was exiled, giving him time to develop a way of keeping the grass safe from Thread. If only the colonists could harness such an invention without having to break their punishment.

**Dragonsdawn, Part Two: Content Notes: None visible**

We pick up with the report that the shuttle has obtained its target pods of Thread, although Ongola is suspicious of the amount of time taken to do so. And then a rather large earthquake rumble that wakes the sleeping colonists. The sensors can't tell where a volcano is going to pop, but they know one is going to soon. And then one does, safely away from Landing - pops up completely out of the sea. Telgar, the seismologist, reassures everyone that the big volcano they built the settlement on is in no danger of blasting itself, even if all the new activity is on the same tectonic plate that the big volcano is on. And then he and several others go off to take a look at things and make sure their confidence is warranted. And to have a place in mind in case the colony has to pick itself up and go in a hurry.

Our next scene is the return of the shuttle...with Ongola calling Benden to say Nabol is coming in poorly, even though Nabol thinks he's fine, at least according to what he says the instruments are reading. The data returned from the shuttle so far indicates the wanderer wobbles into orbit and out of orbit, but that the reason for Threadfall is likely the wandering planet capturing the Thread in the cloud of material surrounding the system in its gravitational well and then giving it up to Pern's stronger gravitational pull, so Thread will always be there, generally on intervals of two hundred and fifty years, give or take the interference of the other moons in the system. The shuttle has a payload of Thread pods to confirm this hypothesis...if they can touch down safely.

As Benden attempts to talk sense into Nabol, the truth of their descent makes itself clear, and there's not enough fuel left to try and abort the reentry. The shuttle breaks itself apart over the sea, losing the lives of Nabol and Lemos, as well as their cargo. The dolphins find no survivors, nor the scoop that would contain their cargo.

I again wonder why Lemos, Bitra, and Nabol Hold exist, considering that they have not done anything the colony itself would consider noble or praiseworthy and deserving of memorialization. They're not around to establish themselves afterward, either, so I would assume that there would be no reason for anyone to keep their memories alive. Unless as a warning to others, and generally speaking, you don't name entire towns after people you want to be villains. Maybe the places that will become those Holds started out as penal colonies, in the vein of Australia, before becoming population centers. That said, with the way that Thread is basically lethal, I would expect less of colonies of exiles and more of people staked out in the path of Thread as a warning against those who would defy X, Y, or Z.

There is also an interesting problem here, but the colonists are out of options on how to study it - probes and ships that have gotten near the Thread pods are either destroyed or damaged to the point of instrument malfunction. I wonder how both the survey team and the colony ships themselves managed to avoid encountering this issue, since proximity is enough to cause problems with spacefaring objects. I also have a feeling it will become important again later on.

I also wonder how much of Nabol insisting things are fine was instrument malfunction and how much it was him being a jerk to the tower. F'rex:

> "Tower to **Moth** , do you read me? Benden here. **Moth** , respond."  
>  "Good morning, Admiral Benden," Nabhi responded promptly and insolently. "We are on course and reentering at a good angle."  
>  [...Benden gives him proper readings...]  
>  But Nabhi seemed undisturbed by Paul's information, and he did indeed report readings consonant with a good reentry.

So Nabol trusts his own instruments instead of the tower, which seems like a very bad idea, but then again, as the narrative characterizes him, he's not really all that interested in listening to the tower or the people inside. One would think things feel wrong to him, but I have no idea what a bad entry would feel like to a pilot, especially one flying by wire. Airline pilots and spacefarers probably would know whether you can tell if something is bad just by the way the craft is. Either way, Nabol gets himself and Lemos killed by not trusting the people who have better eyes on his descent. That's enough by itself to tell that he's not as good a pilot as he thought he was.

As it is, the administrative council of Pern meets to discuss their options - survival and adaptation win, along with the idea of moving into the cave systems to conserve resources. When Benden suggests restructuring Landing, Ongola tells him it would be better to move off their location and go north. Tillek agrees, given the most recent seismic activity has everyone nervous, and thinks that Telgar has the right idea of where to resettle. All the supplies that can be carried will be used to cross the sea.

> Paul grinned at Emily. It was much easier when people made to their own minds to do what their leaders has decided was best for them.

And thus ends Part Two, by far the largest part of the book.

As it stands, there's still two people that could be a problem to the colony - Stev Kimmer, who has not been seen for a while, and Ted Tubberman, who is still shunned from the community. Is anyone going to tell him or help him get moved, since he probably doesn't have a self-sufficient stake? Ned can, and Ted's wife can, so I guess we assume they will. Now would also be a good time to ask if Ted is willing to barter his invention for reinstatement to the colony - since everyone is now basically in the same boat, and will have to live in close proximity, they should probably be trying to work together. Ted has something that can survive Thread, and more importantly, can protect plants and grasses from Thread as well, which would give the new colony site an advantage in survival by not having to worry about whether or not their crops will survive the attacks. The colony wants it, and he can use it to leverage himself into a good position.

Stev is the only character left that hasn't attempted something to the detriment of the colony, so his turn must be coming up soon. That way, only the loyal remain and they can then turn the full attention of Pern to the survival and eventual eradication of Thread. The dragons that they're betting on haven't yet proven themselves. We know they will, but there's still some uncertainty present for the colonists. Plus, there's already starting to be some segregation between those that have dragons and their space requirements and those that don't. So the entire social structure could unravel itself before cooperation can be established - or the colonies might run out of resources trying to support the dragons as they grow.

This is why it would have been better for the Avril plot to run first - Landing is dealt a crippling blow by losing pilot and spacecraft, then Thread arrives and forces a hot scramble. While Kitti Ping works on dragonet to dragon work, Ted fires off the beacon, gets shunned, and develops grubs as a giant middle finger to Landing. Then Nabol and Lemos go up and crash down. Dragons hatch, earthquake rumbles, and now we are at the same point, with the colony relocating, believing hard in unproven dragons because dragons and caves are basically where all the marbles are. Even though the outcome is going to happen, there's enough tension in the how, and whether Stev is going to sabotage the new location over revenge or the fact that he actually loved Avril and has been biding his time until he could exact revenge. That way we get a chain of bad things that seems logical and helps to build the idea that there's only one feasible way out of this, instead of having to put the Thread plot on hold to handle all the villainous people plots. And if this were all happening within the first, say, two years of the colony, there wouldn't be such a large unexplained gap of time where things were apparently in stasis before action decided to happen again, either.

_[The plot timing for this story is really not great. The more of these books I read, the more I realize they follow the same sort of structure where all the plots build until they all come to a climax at the same time. Which is not a wrong way of doing things, but it does mean that all the plots have to be intertwined in ways that make sense, and they all have to have a small number of solutions that work equally effectively on all of them. This book doesn't work in that regard, and it doesn't put the sub-plot resolutions in the right places to maintain the appropriate levels of tension throughout. This pattern happens in other books, too, except for the part where many of the sub-plots simply disappear when a character is relocated, and those parts are never spoken again, or have a one-sentence resolution at the end. This might be the first book where the sub-plots are trying to get resolved rather than ignored, and I once again have to wonder how much editorial control anyone ever had over these books and what kinds of suggestions were made and rejected to make them into something better.]_

Anyway, Part Three begins next week.


	13. Pulling Up Stakes

Last time, a shuttle crashed with the last hope of knowing what Thread is and how it works in deep space, the care and feeding of dragons began to produce a distinct group of people with very different needs than the standard colony population, and some volcanic rumbles convinced everyone that it was time to abandon the original point of Landing in favor of natural cave structures on the northern continent.

**Dragonsdawn, Part Three: Content Notes: Population with[Idiot Ball](https://tvtropes,org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall)**

We have a timestamp! 11.18.08 Pern. Which means that the entirety of Part Two took place over _seven months_. Eight years of inaction, basically, and then seven months of furious action. That makes no sense.

This part begins with Telgar and assistants examining a very large cave system that looks like it can house several hundred chambers, as well as provide air vents, fresh water, and geothermal heating. With a burned-out volcano caldera nearby to house the dragons and their humans, pasture land close to surface caves, and stone that can be used to seal the place up and turn it into "an impregnable fort." Welcome to the future Fort Hold and Weyr, everyone, which will be built in the caves where Sallah and Tarvi first made love. Lest we spend too much time there, the narrative shifts over to Sorka waking up to both a hum and pain, which she deduces are related, and calls for the midwife, Greta. Who arrives almost as soon as she's asked for, having properly read the summoning fair of dragonets flying past her window. Sorka is interested that Faranth picked up on an unconscious preference as to which midwife she would like attending her birth, but she can't pursue the thought much because the pains of labor bring her back to being focused on the body. Which has the side effect of agitating Faranth. An epidural calms Faranth by taking away Sorka's contraction pains, and a little walking around gets her into the next phase.

> Sorka's water burst then, and outside the humming went up a few notes and deepened in intensity.  
>  "I think I'd better check you, Sorka," Greta said.  
>  Sean stared at her. "Do you deliver to dragonsong?"  
>  Greta gave a low chuckle. "They've an instinct for birth, Sean, and I know you vets have been aware of it, too. Let's get her back to the bed."

Um, Landing has known about this particular dragonet trait for the majority of this book. There's no real reason for anyone to be skeptical at anyone who can take those signals and interpret them. Especially not you, Sean.

Sorka's labor goes without complications, and she gives birth to a son, with very red hair. Then the narrative goes a little bit farther into the future, with Sean's impatience at not getting to ride the dragons yet. And the news that Wind Blossom is still running the Ping program, although with much less success - her first four attempts have produced no viable eggs. Sean doesn't have much faith in Wind Blossom, and Paul Benden is anxious about whether or not the current crop can perform according to the specifications.

It also turns out the dragons need both space and distance from Landing so as to be good neighbors, so on the way back from a hunting trip, Sean and Carenath both decide to buck the program a bit and take a short mounted flight.

> It was also not the time for second thoughts. He took a compulsive hold with legs made strong from years of riding and shoved his buttocks as deeply into the natural saddle [between two neck ridges] as he could.  
>  "Let's fly, Carenath. Let's do it now!"  
>  **We will fly** , Carenath said with ineffable calm. He tilted forward off the ridge.  
>  Despite years of staying astride bucking horses, sliding horses, and jumping horses, the sensation that Sean Connell experienced in that seemingly endless moment was totally different and completely new. A brief memory of a girl's voice urging him to think of Spacer Yves flitted through his move. He was falling through space again. A very short space. What sort of a nerd-brain was he to have attempted this?  
>  **Faranth wants to know what we are doing** , Carenath said calmly.  
>  Before Sean's staggered mind registered the query, Carenath's wings had finished their downstroke and they were rising. Sean felt the sudden return of gravity, felt Carenath's neck under him, felt the weight and the return of the confidence that had been totally in abeyance during the endless-seeming initial drop.

Sean and Carenath fly around a bit, and while Carenath is quite sure he won't dump Sean, Sean realizes the need for something to keep him firmly attached to the dragon. Sorka tells them both they need to get down _right now_ , even though Carenath doesn't want to. After reassuring all the dragon riders that assembled quickly after his demonstration that their dragons can fly, Sean sketches out the kind of safety gear they're going to need to stay firmly seated on the dragons, as well as the need for glasses to protect the eyes from the wind.

Sean is a little less exuberant when called before the council of Landing to account for his reckless behavior, even though it now proves that bronze dragons, at least, can fly at just about a year old, and that the dragons should start having their own clutches at three years of age. Cherry Duff is not happy about the timetable, but everyone else accepts the requirements for flying gear (tanned hide and plastics goggles) and produces them for flight training to start ten days afterward.

The next scene opens with something that continues to have me question the intelligence of the residents of Pern. Beyond all the things that have already been pointed out in the comments all along the way.

> Landing had grown accustomed over the past year and a half to the grumblings and rumblings underfoot. In the morning of the second day of the fourth month of their ninth spring on Pern, early risers sleepily noted the curl of smoke, and the significance did not register.  
>  Sean and Sorka, emerging from their cave with Carenath and Faranth, also noticed it.  
>  **Why does the mountain smoke?** Faranth wanted to know.  
>  "The mountain **what**?" Sorka demanded, waking up enough to absorb her dragon's words. "Jays, Sean, look!"  
>  Sean gave a long hard look. "It's not Garben. It's Picchu Peak. Patrice de Broglie was wrong! Or was he?"

No, I don't think people are going to be like "Oh, huh. That volcano that we thought was dormant has started to smoke. Clearly this isn't important enough or weird enough to make any sort of impact on our brains. Especially not since the ground has been shaking regularly for the last 18 months." That kind of ignorance of natural disaster impending only happens because the plot demands it. Landing has Thread to deal with already, so I would have thought they would be extra-sensitive to extra disaster incoming. Landing should be on really high alert that they're going to end up toast before they have the opportunity to get everything out of the path of the volcano. Because Pompeii is hopefully still in their history. But they'll spend three more days before the council convenes to talk about the increased volcanic activity. In the meantime, Wind Blossom's fifth attempt at a clutch hatches, but turn out to be afraid of light, signaling them as the ancestors to the watch-whers that guard places at night, and Sean is unsure on how to teach the dragons to teleport, even as they have taught the dragons to chew the phosphine rock that will produce fire to char Thread.

Cherry Duff, magistrate and vox populi for this session, is very concerned about the volcano, but is able to successfully follow the thought of "Landing has to move" to "and there's a place waiting for us, isn't there?", stealing the thunder of Benden and Boll and getting to see the announcement that will talk about the move and the logistics thereof. Cherry moves on to the fighting power of the still maturing dragons and is reassured that everything is progressing according to plan, especially in light of Wind Blossom's inability to reproduce Kitti Ping's work. There's also a report from Telgar on the progress of construction of the fort hold and associated weyr. The only thing that could get in the way would be if the volcano decided it didn't like their timetables and fired off prematurely.

Now that I look at it, it seems like Landing and its administrators under-react to problems, not actually treating them with the respect they deserve to have. Thread might have been the only one that got proper panic, but only after seeing what it did. Avril, Ted, the volcano, Nabol's crash, all of those things seem to catch the administrators by surprise. I'd believe it a bit more if Landing had already transitioned to the lower-tech society they were aiming for, but there's no indication that this has happened in any way, and so everyone should be equipped with sufficient technology to try and anticipate these actions. 18 months of rumbles is more than enough time to figure out the plan of pulling up stakes and getting the fuck out and preparing for it to happen at the first sign that things are getting worse. Like a plume of smoke from a volcano that was thought dead.

_[Under-reactiing to a potential disaster? One that has been showing signs and that, at least in theory, should be preparable for if there were enough resources and political will for it to happen? We would also like to believe that, unlike the way that SARS-CoV-2 was handled in the States, Pern hasn't been systematically depriving their watchers of resources and dismantling them so there's not nearly enough capacity to respond to incidents as they happen. And the volcano starting to smoke is a really big and obvious sign, unlike the pandemic. So it's really inexplicable that they wait a full three days before deciding that they might need to do something about this. Unless that reluctance to act on shunning Ted that Paul Benden has is his actual personality, compared to what we were told earlier about the admiral who liked to make decisions quickly and then deal with the fallout from them at that point. In any case, Landing isn't an entire planet, it's a municipal division. Three days is far too long to wait on what to do about it.]_

Next time, maybe the exodus actually begins?

  



	14. Make Like a Tree and GTFO!

Last time, there was birth, reckless disregard for rules that turned out okay, and a sign of life from something that the colonists really, really don't want to be waking up. Good thing there's someone already preparing a place for them to go when they need to bug out.

**Dragonsdawn, Part Three: Content Notes: Blatant Hypocrisy, Blinkered Thinking**

This segment opens with Pol being distracted from this work by Mary Tubberman.

> "Please don't turn away an old friend away unheard."  
>  "Mary," Pol said kindly, " **you** weren't shunned." He shared the earpiece with Bay, who nodded in vigorous approval.  
>  "I might as well have been." The woman's tone was bitter, then her voice broke on a tremulous note and both Ray [sic] and Pol could hear her weeping. "Look, Pol, something's happened to Ted. Those creatures of his are **loose**. I've pulled down the Thread shutters, but they're still prowling about and making awful noises."  
>  "Creatures? What creatures?" Pol locked glances with Bay. Beyond them, their dragonets roused from a doze and chirped in empathic anxiety.  
>  "The beasts he's been rearing." Mary sounded as if she thought Pol knew what she was talking about and was being deliberately obtuse. "He-he stole some frozen in-vitros from veterinary and he used Kitti's program on them to make them obey him, but they're still... things. His masterpiece does nothing to stop **them**." Again her bitterness was trenchant.  
>  [...Bay and Pol agree to come help her, after finding out that Ned's not available and neither is her first choices...]  
>  "Sue and Chuck moved north, Mary, after that first bad rock shower from Picchu." Bay was patient with her. The woman had a right to sound paranoid, living in seclusion as she had for so long, with an unbalanced husband and so many earthshocks and volcanic rumblings.

This does not sound like paranoia to me. This sounds like someone who is scared for their existence and is trying to get someone to help them survive. Also, there are still people within the blast zone of the volcano? What kind of person stays within that death zone with evidence that it will, in fact, try hard to kill you? (...then again, Mt. Saint Helens. And more than a few other eruptions. Although in this case, everyone can pack up and move out of the zone. So not as much "can't" as "don't".) Or, if I wait a few lines, I find that Bay is ready to move northward and not deal with the ash, so premature condemnation on my part.

_[Thing I missed in the earlier pass: Mary is terrified for her life, but she's also essentially been living the life of someone shunned, because she's sticking with her husband. And, depending on what Ted was up to, she also sounds like someone who has realized how terrible and abusive her husband is and is trying to get away. In her case, Ted's not there to try and keep her there, and also, there are large cats running around unchecked, so she's really very afraid for her life and she has no reason at all to want to stay behind, with the eruption of the volcano about to happen in addition to the lethal cats and the dead husband. How much did Landing condemn Mary and her children to traumatic and possibly abusive situations because they shunned Ted. And how much of what has been excused and justified by "well, they could leave Ted at any time. Why aren't they shunning him like the rest of us?" Which is extremely callous and very appropriate for Pern, but blech. There's compound and fractial wrong there.]_

As it is, Bay summons Sean and Sorka to investigate what's going on at the Tubbermans, so that everything can be kept unofficial. And spends significant amounts of time during the flight cursing and condemning Ted Tubberman for having done generic experimentation.

> but for Ted Tubberman, disgruntled **botanist** , to tinker with ova - and he **had not** understood the techniques or the process - to make independent alterations was intolerable to her, both professionally and personally. Bay knew herself to be a tolerant person, friendly and considerate, but if Ted Tubberman was dead, she would be tremendously relieved. And she would not be the only one. Just thinking about the man produced symptoms of agitation and pure fury which made Bay lose her professional detachment, and that annoyed her even more. There she was on dragonback, with only the noise of the wind in her ears, with all Jordan spread below her, and she was wasting contemplative time on Ted Tubberman.

I can't really believe that anyone that would describe themselves as knowing they are tolerant, friendly, and considerate as actually being any of those adjectives. Especially when right before this self-delusion, Bay dismisses the thought that Ted might be able to understand the Ping program based solely on his profession as a botanist. Who hold the distinction, in Terran history, of being the first people to figure out genetics and how to breed specific traits into organisms. Ted is _very much qualified_ to understand what Kitti Ping's program does and how one might use it, even if he's not experienced at the actual running of it. Plus, he's done something like this before, with the thing that Ned was reporting on earlier. The extent of what Ted was doing may be surprising, but that he was doing things should not be.

As the dragons arrive, they see a building with significant damage, as if something had burst out of it, and the dragonets sent out to scout return with pictures of a very large spotted beast, which let up a yowl when the dragonets encountered it, and something else that is bigger, but apparently silent. Mary and her three children accept an offer to be moved somewhere safer, and the youngest, Peter, asks the blunt question about whether his dad is dead, and is unimpressed by Bay's response.

With good reason - Tubberman's corpse is discovered inside the damaged compound, having been gnawed and mauled, but not so badly that it wasn't clear that fangs and claws hurt him, and Tubberman's back was broken by what killed him. Sean calls Tubberman insane for working on big predators, and the team gets to work collecting all of Ted's notes and data, as well as finding sufficient material to cremate Ted's body. They also collect a sample of grubs and grass to analyze and see if they can figure out how Ted made Thread-resistant things. After having seen the family off, Sean and Pol light the cremating pyre and then fly off under "yet another shower of the volcanic dust which would eventually bury Landing." There's going to have to be a lot of that dust to provide enough cover and stop the Thread from burrowing in and destroying everything, so that their descendants can find the preserved remains two thousand years later. While nobody can apparently force anyone to go, it's pretty clear at this point that staying is a death sentence.

The narrative wants to stay with the Tubberman theme, as it picks up with Pol trying to break the cipher that Ted put on his research and failing frustratingly.

> "Judging by the DNA/RNA, he was experimenting with felines, but I cannot imagine why. There're already enough running wild here at Landing. Unless-" Pol broke off and pinched his lower lip nervously, grimacing as his thoughts followed uneasy paths. "We **know** -" He paused to bang the table in emphasis. "-that felines do not take mentasynth well. **He** knew that, too. **Why** would he repeat mistakes?"

Ted's motivations are unclear, at this point, but given that he was an exile from Landing, big predatory animals probably works pretty well as a defense system. Cats being extremely intelligent animals, getting an empathetic or telepathic bond with them and being able to direct them would be pretty interesting as a defense troop or as a set of assistants. Or as pest control, as we find out from Tubberman's son. Ted was directing the cheetahs that he had used the mentasynth on to hunt tunnel snakes. Ted may have been working on cats just as a way of proving himself to be the superior mind, too. We can't ask him, though.

Wind Blossom's watch-wher ancestors are still reviled by everyone but her, whom they adore, incidentally.

Ted working on predator cats means that the excuse of "sea feline" is now a bit more plausible, even though it turned out to be untrue. Is there anything that's still on the list of things that need to be explicitly foreshadowed or created before we finish the book?

As everyone tries to decipher the notes on the cats and the grubs, the narrative shifts to the administrative offices, where one of the seismologists bursts in and tells Emily [spelled Emilie at first] that the big volcano that Landing is sitting in the shadow of is about to blast its top, and so everybody needs to go, NOW. Ash production has increased significantly, and continues to the point of darkening the sky in ash as everyone executes the evacuation plan already devised. Humans, animals, and technology all get herded on to the shuttles, with one away and safely and the other just barely beating the actual volcanic eruption that very swiftly buries much of Landing in hot lava. No casualties, remarkably, with everyone either safely away from the lava or holed up in the caves away from the lava. But that also means the final link to the spacecraft still in orbit will be severed, as it cannot make the journey. The dragons and their riders surreptitiously grab some sheep from the stocks to feed the dragons before Emily comes over to ask them to be airlifters of cargo to the new settlement. While discussing, one of the sled drivers is on a collision course with a dragon and rider, who avoid the collision by popping into hyperspace. And falling to return, sending the dragons and fire lizards info grief keening and the dragonriders and administration scrambling to figure out a solution so as to avoid this scenario happening again. The decision made is to start really observing and figuring out how to consistently direct the fire lizards to use their teleportation skills, so that they can then translate those skills into commanding the dragons to do the same, so that even in a startle situation, dragons and riders don't get lost to hyperspace.

Which is actually weird, as the fire lizards startle and go somewhere without human direction. One would think that the dragons would also have a space they would reflexively go to in the instance of being startled or needing to self-preserve. So, even if the human blanks, the dragon should have a default space to go to. The more we learn about how the dragons were designed and have evolved, the more I wonder why Kitti Ping would not put basic safety protocols in place so as to protect the investment of time and materials into the dragons. Or to install a dead man switch such that the connection between dragon and human is severed in case of the death of mental damage of one of the partners. For designed and genetically manipulated organisms, there's a significant lack of [having passed the plan through the five-year-old test](http://www.worldconquer.org/evil_overlord.html). ("One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.") A world that has been deliberately built on [No OSHA Compliance](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoOSHACompliance) (which also has an entry in the Evil Overlord List, incidentally) sounds exciting to anyone who thinks they're a protagonist, but really is just going to cause problems like the one that killed Moreta and that just killed one of this first generation of dragons. It's even worse when you remember that dragons were meant to protect life from Thread. Designing a savior that can just as easily kill as save seems like a really dumb idea.

Returning to the plot, the dragonriders realize in fairly short order the inklings that the dragonets are visual on their teleport power, and devise an experiment to time how long it takes for the dragonets to teleport over distance. It's pretty consistent that no matter what the distance is to teleport, it takes the dragonets eight seconds to complete the trip to whatever location they are sent to. So long as the picture sent is clear enough for the dragonet to use, anyway. To alleviate boredom, the dragonriders practice flying in formations so as to be able to pop out of hyperspace in the correct positions, ready to attack Thread. They decide three sections are best, with six as a full complement, needing three leaders - Sean, Sorka, and Dave are swiftly elected squadron leaders.

There's also a useful comment suggesting that dragonets and dragons are likely to be very long-lived and disease resistant. If they didn't have such a tight bond causing dragons to kill themselves, it would be possible for them to transfer their bond to another person. What a world that would be, if one could pass a dragon down through the generations, accumulating the minds and memories of an entire family of riders. Imagine if every dragonrider became a Dax, of sorts, or had the connection of the Avatar (of The Last Airbender / Korra) such that their dragons were a conduit to the past and continuity. That would be really awesome.

_[I realize some of this is so that someone doesn't have a major continuity break with the earlier books, but it definitely highlights how little was actually thought through in the creation the dragons, how few safety protocols were thought of, and how willing to waste lives Kitti Ping was, to have made these kinds of decisions about the longevity and mental health of both dragons and their riders. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary to think of Kitti Ping as a villain, even though she's a designated Good Guy. When we get to the Todd books, we'll get to see her much more in that role, filtered through the perception of her daughter and grand-daughter. Which also may reflect a certain amount of mother-son relationship between authors, as well.]_

Eventually, Sean gets asked to have the dragons transport some Thread-sensitive equipment northward when they head that way on Benden's request. Sean initially bristles at being treated like pack animal riders, but he quickly realizes that cooperation is better and agrees to do it, selling it to the other riders as a way of getting pictures in their head they'll need layer to fight Thread with.

On a hunt in the morning, as he did with every other discovery, Sean accidentally finds the way to direct dragon teleportation.

> "All right, Carenath," he said, thinking ahead with relief to the last loads at Landing. "Let's get back to the tower as fast as we can and get this over with!"  
>  He raised his arm and dropped it.  
>  The next instant he and Carenath were enveloped in a blackness that was so absolute that Sean was certain his heart had stopped.  
>  **I will not panic!** he thought fiercely, pushing the memory of Marco and Duluth to the back of his mind. His heart raced, and he was aware of the stunning cold of the black nothingness.  
>  **I am here!  
>  Where are we, Carenath?** But Sean already knew. They were **between**. He focused intense thoughts on their destination, remembering the curious ash-filtered light around Landing, the shape of the meteorology tower, the flatness of the grid beyond it, and the bundles awaiting them there.  
>  **We are at the tower** , Carenath said, somewhat surprised. And in that instant, they were. Sean cried aloud with relief.  
>  [...Having seen it done, the rest of the wing materializes behind Sean, everyone arriving safely...]  
>  **It was easy, you know. You thought me where to go, and I went. You did tell me to go as fast as possible**. Carenath's tone was mildly reproving.  
>  "If that is all there is to it, what took us so long?" Otto asked.  
>  "Anyone got a spare set of pants?" Nora asked plaintively. "I was so scared I wet myself. But we did it!"  
>  Catherine giggled. The sound brought Sean to his senses, and he allowed himself to smile.  
>  "We were ready to try!" he said, shrugging nonchalantly as he unbuckled his riding straps. Then he realized that he, too, would need to find a clean pair of pants.

Pants-wetting terror aside, yet another accidental discovery for Sean Connell. Which seems to be a major theme in Pern - rarely is anything accomplished through dogged pursuit and methodical experimentation and refinement leading to a breakthrough - instead we have geniuses and accidents of fortune that advance knowledge or restore lost knowledge back to the people that are there. The scientific method is another casualty to the lost knowledge of Pern. Unless perhaps Fandarel has rediscovered this in the Ninth Pass in working on his distance writer.

_[This is super-frustrating, the more I think about it! The arc of history, as written on Terra, pays a lot more attention to the times where someone makes a leaps-and-bounds breakthrough in things, or when stuff changes rapidly and sharply, but those sudden events of change almost always have a narrative of small incremental changes, or refinements to technologies, or other things that are smaller and less noticeable, but that are clearly on the timeline when someone who has the perspective of history is able to look at things. Admittedly, this is the first time we're working with dragons, but it seems very odd to me that nobody has tried to figure out how fire-lizards work, or that Kitti Ping didn't publish notes about the program she created that would give people a clue about fire-lizard behavior and biology, or that someone else might have discovered, the way Menolly does, that having a good picture in your head means your fire-lizard can go to that place or person. Designated Protagonist (or Antagonist) Geniuses is great if you want to selfishly keep all of the knowledge, discovery, and action to those main characters, but society doesn't work that way, not really, not once you have excellent methods of communication, and people eventually start putting two and two together and cross-dscipline pollinating, and you eventually figure out the scientific method, even if you think you've forgotten or lost it, which these colonists presumably haven't.]_

This is a good break point for us, with a good thing happening to give hope to the colony after a sequence of disasters. I'm pretty sure, however, that this happy point is a blip and we'll be back to bad things soon enough. After all, Stev Kimmer is still out there and hasn't had his attempt at revenge yet, and we're getting close to the end of the book.


	15. A Martial Display

Last time, Landing's evacuation timetable was accelerated by the eruption of the main volcano near Landing, and after losing one of their own, the dragonriders successfully figured out how to harness the teleportation power of their dragons. The only untested elements of Kitti Ping's program are flamethrowing and reproduction.

Ted Tubberman died by his own creations, attempting to breed and genetically manipulate directable cheetahs as tunnel snake defense. Stev Kimmer is still around somewhere, potentially dangerous but not a priority in anyone's mind because of the need to move and to fight Thread.

**Dragonsdawn, Part Three: Content Notes:**

It's the home stretch for us! If there's anything of ancient Pernese history still to be observed, this is it.

Which is why I'm interested that this segment opens up with Benden putting a gag order on the extent of Boll's injuries, and even whether or not Boll will survive, when the big sled she was on suffered a severe gyro malfunction and crashed. Everyone working on the sleds and cargo haul blames themselves for the accident, and the stress of everything is only compounded by the accident.

A narrative switch has Sorka winding up to chew Sean out for having done the hyperspace hop, but the truth of how it happened stops her from unloading on him. Instead, it becomes more about training in teleportation, including the need to be able to skip around so as to avoid getting walloped by Thread, and the cargo haul assignment provides perfect cover for practicing the teleportation.

Jumping back to Fort Hold (which has acquired the majuscules by the last chapter), the aerial sled commanders are worried about their power packs for the sleds failing out, and all that Benden has to offer is a request for patience with the dragons - in five years there should be enough to be an aerial fighting force - and the news that Wind Blossom successfully hatched six more dragons. When privately with Ongola, he asks about whether the flotilla that Tillek was commanding grabbed back everything that was lost when a storm capsized nine boats - Tillek is fairly confident they will get it all back. Benden also orders that the staff assisting Wind Blossom be reassigned to other duties, as there's not enough people now to allow for continued experimentation.

Back to dragonriders, who are about to perform their first live-fire test. Carenath chews carefully, as does Faranth, but Porth bites her tongue trying to chew up the rock, and so does Tenneth, right before Polenth burps a small and stinky flame. Carenath follows suit with a much better attempt, and Manooth charcoals a bush with his exhortation. An hour later, all the male dragons have flamed, but the golds have just thrown up after trying to eat the phosphine rock. Sorka has a sneaking suspicion she knows why...

> Sorka was frowning, though, an expression unusual enough to her that Tarrie inquired as to its cause.  
>  "I was just thinking. Kit Ping was such a traditionalist..." Sorka regarded her husband for a long moment, until he ducked his head, unable to maintain the eye contact. "All right, Sean, you know every symbol in that program. Did Kit Ping introduce a gender discrimination?"  
>  "A what?" Tarrie asked. The other queen riders gathered close, while the young men took discreet backward steps.  
>  "A gender inhibition...meaning the queens lay eggs, and the other colors fight!" Sorka was disgusted.  
>  "It may just be that the queens aren't mature enough yet," Sean said, temporizing. "I haven't been able to figure out some of Kit Ping's equations. Maybe the flame production is a mature ability. I don't know why the queens all barfed. We'll have to ask Pol and Bay when we get to Fort. But I tell you what, there's no reason you girls can't use flamethrowers. With wands a bit longer, you wouldn't singe your dragon by mistake."  
>  His suggestion did much to mollify the queen riders for the time being, but Sean hoped fervently that Pol and Bay could give a more acceptable verdict. Seventeen dragons made a more impressive display than seven. And he was determined to impress when the dragonriders flew into Fort Hold. The only burdens dragons should ever carry again were their riders and firestone!

And there's the first official notation of firestone. As well as a marked shift in Sean's attitude - we can now see where dragonriders get their opinion of Inherent Superiority from. And Sorka is also going to throw shade on Kitti Ping's decision to make queen riders unable to chew firestone, which makes me very happy. A tradition of independent-minded queen riders should have been a thing on Pern. Except for the narrative squelching them and killing them everywhere they appear, they would have been. We're laying the groundwork for the social structure of Pern, right here, right now.

Another narrative flit, back to Telgar and two of his subordinates discussing with Benden and Pol that the watch-wher prototypes are excellent in caves, able to discern tunnels and pitfalls that the humans can't.

> Both he [Pol] and his eye had tried to reason with the indignant Wind Blossom when she had been requested to suspend the dragon program. Though she maintained that the emergency transfer from Landing to Fort had damaged many of the eggs in the clutch she had manipulated, Pol and Bay had seen the autopsy reports and knew the claim to be spurious. They had been lucky to hatch six live creatures.

Benden insists that the watch-whers have very controlled breeding, even in the face of knowledge that they guard doorways, can carry more than their own weight, and are basically omnivores. Which will be taken care of, apparently.

So let's talk about Wind Blossom. The narrative and the characters have been consistently negative and distrustful of her ability to carry on the dragon program, although every time we've seen her at work, she is apparently working on trying to improve the program, rather than just trying to replicate it. If Kitti Ping didn't leave detailed enough instructions on how to replicate her work, that's Kitti's fault, not Wind Blossom's. Kitti was also described as guarding the knowledge she had fairly closely, so it's possible that the Ping program has things obfuscated or deliberately left out so that others can't actually use her instructions to replicate or adapt the program. Which would make Ted Tubberman quite smart and qualified if he created both grubs and felines from a program that has deliberate holes in it. Wind Blossom also wasn't directly trained by the beings that used this kind of genetic power, the narrative has been pointing out every chance it gets, so her knowledge base isn't the same as Kitti Ping's.

That her first successes are the watch-whers, whom everyone apparently finds repulsive, doesn't endear her to anyone, but are signs that she can do the job, as are the six viable dragons. But then there's this:

> "Tom Patrick says Wind Blossom chooses to distrust the male half of this leadership." Paul grinned. Actually he did find the situation ludicrous, but since Wind Blossom had immured herself in her quarters until she "had a fair hearing," he had grasped the opportunity to transfer personnel to a more productive employment. Most of them had been grateful.

This sounds like narrative justification of a prejudice that developed from a lack of confidence in Wind Blossom's abilities. Wind Blossom may not actually know how to run a lab and keep the scientists inside happy - Kitti Ping may have been waiting on that for later, or may have been thinking that others would take over the lead of the dragon program when she passed away. The narrative is been careful only to tell us about the results of what's going on in there and not to actually spend time inside so that we can see how the lab is being run and what setbacks are plaguing them. There are a lot of reasons why things might not be working out for Wind Blossom that aren't actually her fault. And if most of that blame is coming from Benden and Pol, then Wind Blossom has a good reason to feel like the men have a bias against her and are looking for excuses to stop her.

_[Wind Blossom will get a significant overhaul in the Todd books, as that where he mostly rests his narrative hooks so that they can be useful for the Third Pass and the things that happen in that cycle for the dragonriders. There's a significant amount of time spent before that on the level of people who haven't otherwise gotten any sort of treatment from an author for any significant length, but once Todd gets back up into the dragons part of Pern, it's Wind Blossom who provides the path going forward and the solutions to the plot that arises. There's quite some time before we get to that point, but the hooks are available for Todd to work into. And, quite possibly, for the legions of fan-writers doing their best to make something consistent and non-terrible out of the canon presented to them.]_

After receiving a status update about the dragons from Pol, Benden asks if there are enough grubs to test their effectiveness on northern soil and receives an affirmative, before Pol asks if it's true that Benden isn't going to fight the whole Fall. He's not, because they don't have the aircraft to roast everything. Benden is also worried about logistics of power and many other things lasting to the end of the Pass.

Narrative flit to the dragonriders, who are receiving their own updates about how things are going at Fort, including Boll's injuries, and the general idea that Thread over Fort today isn't going to have a whole lot of defense at all. This gives Sean the opening he's looking for, so he requisitions ten flamethrowers for the queens, pictures of the new harbor installed on Fort, and starts having the other dragons load up on firestone. The dragonriders go through a preflight check of both equipment and airspace distance, and then vault off and teleport to Fort for their inaugural fighting flight. Which is picked up on by cameras around Fort, so Ongola and Benden get to see the action as it happens. Which springs Benden to the garage to request that the sleds in service get airborne to help the dragons, and that all the cameras record as much as they can, as he hops into one of the sleds and sallies forth to assist. Then we get the actual fighting from Sean and Carenath's perspective as they flame, dodge, reload (which needs practice) and pop in and out of hyperspace to shake off Thread that finds its way to them. After clearing the airspace above Fort, and exhausting the supplies of firestone they brought with them, Sean calls a halt.

Flit once more to Boll, receiving the news of the dragons fighting and flaming, and trying to sit up so that she can watch it herself. Flit again to the welcome home party that's turned out for the dragonriders as they land themselves at Fort Hold. After much cheering and rejoicing, there is finally enough order to get the medics in to tend to the wounds of the dragons and their riders, while Sean takes the data of the fight and starts mentally drafting new drills and formations to maximize the effective output of the dragons and the minimization of injuries. Once patched, the seventeen riders step forward to meet with Benden, Ongola, and Keroon, each dressed in their formal military dress, standing at the top of a ramp.

> They reached the ramp, and somehow the queen riders had dropped a step behind the others and Sean stood in the center. When they halted, he took a step forward and saluted. It seemed the correct thing to do. Admiral Benden, tears in his eyes, proudly returned the salute.  
>  "Admiral Benden, sir," said Sean, rider of bronze Carenath, "may I present the Dragonriders of Pern?"

And that's it. No afterword, nor any major disaster to follow, and, unlike other books, it didn't end with a Hatching.

I note with amusement that the narrative has decided to use the standard construction for dragonriders here at the end, expressing its approval and satisfaction that this set of riders are fully ready for the title.

I note with suspicion and shade that the dragonriders somehow naturally sorted themselves so that the queen riders, who participated just as much in the fighting as the others, are a step back, diminishing themselves in the formation, as if they believe in Kitti Ping's gender segregation. I would have expected Sean and Sorka presenting together, especially with the way that Sorka was unhappy about the queen dragons being unable to chew firestone, and the way that they normally did things as a couple before the narrative started ignoring Sorka and treating her as secondary.

The last few segments have focused almost exclusively on Sean, even though Sorka was also elected as a leader. Coming off of both Moreta and Nerilka, it seems like someone slipping back into old habits. But given the construction of the book into parts, instead of explicit chapters, I wonder whether Dragonsdawn was written before Moreta and Nerilka, even though it is published afterward, or whether Dragonsdawn was constructed in the same way that Dragonflight was, by stitching together novellas and/or short stories into a whole. Because a lot of it feels like a throwback in style.

Past the end of the narrative, there is a map of the Stakes of Landing, a map and chronicle of the first twelve Threadfall locations, the dedication, acknowledgement of the assistance of a professor of reproductive biology that helped give science to the myths and a naval engineer that helped configure the patterns of how Thread falls based on piecing together what had been said about them in previous books.

Finally, the ebook version I have been using for this is clearly based on a reprint or updated version, as it lists books by Todd McCaffrey in the back matter and acknowledges the death of Anne McCaffrey in the author biography section. Your versions may differ in the back.

Next time, we take a skip forward in publication order and tag a collection of short stories all around the same time period chronicled here in Dragonsdawn, so as to avoid awkwardly spinning back to it after doing the Renegades of Pern for two books. The problem in trying to keep a coherent narrative now is that publication orders and recommended reading orders are going to start bouncing back and forth between early and later Passes.


End file.
